Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the April 21st, 2008 issue of InSITE:

• IANSA: International Action Network on Small Arms
• Secrecy News
• Small Arms Survey
• Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society
• UC Berkeley Library's Congressional Research Tutorials

[RJ]

IANSA: International Action Network on Small Arms
http://www.iansa.org/

The International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) is a network of 800 organizations in 120 countries, seeking "stronger regulation of guns in society and better controls on arms exports." The website provides coverage of the activities of the member organizations and tracks current developments and news items related to small arms and light weapons (SALW) including the manufacture, licit and illicit trade, use, control and destruction of these weapons. The site seems very much "by and for" activists and advocates of arms control; the global breadth of the organization and its nature as a consortium of independent partners makes for some unevenness in content. The pages for some regions or specific campaigns are updated much more frequently than others. The site features a Google-based search engine which helps to locate specific content but also suffers from the usual problems of Google's algorithms. Multiple "rolls" of links and feeds along with minimal editorship make for a somewhat overwhelming feel. IANSA's website seems best used as an aggregation site for news items and links to member organizations and as a general survey of arms control issues. Users seeking in-depth, specialist coverage of specific issues on small arms control would do better to consult the Small Arms Survey (also reviewed in this issue of InSITE). [JPC]

Secrecy News
http://fas.org/blog/secrecy/

Secrecy News is the website of the Federation of American Scientists (“FAS”) Project on Government Secrecy.  FAS’s mission is to provide the public with timely, non-partisan analyses of global issues which involve science and technology.  The Secrecy News website is a subsidiary FAS project, written by Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at FAS.  The site is a blog, whose entries contain information and updates on government secrecy.  There are links to most documents cited in the blog postings.  Most of these documents are hosted on FAS website (www.fas.org), but are not created by FAS.  They are generally PDFs of publicly available documents, such as legal complaints, government investigation reports, and press releases.  The blog may also link to FAS web pages that index publicly available documents on specific topics, such as the State Secrets Privilege.  Secrecy News only contains links for blog entries, organized by date of posting; it is not indexed by topic areas or specific issues.  Users can run a simple search of the blog through a search box at the top of the page.  Secrecy News’ coverage begins in mid-January 2006 and is ongoing.  Users can receive security news updates from Secrecy News via email, or sign up for its RSS feed. [LB]

Small Arms Survey
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/

The Small Arms Survey is a research project of the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. As a research project, the Survey seeks "to act as a resource for governments, policy-makers, researchers, and activists in terms of information and research on small arms issues." The site has a functioning search engine and many of the links in the site map are only to brief, introductory descriptions of the topics listed. However the Survey is worthwhile for the reports available in the "Spotlight" and "Publications" sections. These documents (in PDF) include regional and annual reports on the trade, use and control of small arms, with foci on specific countries, campaigns, and economic and social aspects. For example, the 2006 annual report included a section on reduction for demand of small arms. The site is clearly intended for specialists and researchers, with possible secondary use by policymakers and advocates. As a whole, the site is more tightly focused on provision of in-depth information than is the more activist-oriented IANSA website. [JPC]

Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/

Housed at Stanford Law School, the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a part of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology.  As a public interest technology law and policy center, CIS brings together academics, legislators, scientists, and others “to study the interaction of new technologies and the law and to examine ... how the two can either promote or harm public goods like free speech, privacy, ... and scientific inquiry.”  The website highlights the resources and activities of the Center, including the Cyberlaw Clinic and the Fair Use Project.  Designed to give students practical experience, the Clinic represents various litigants who are pursuing cases that affect the public interest and technological development.  The Clinic’s cases are listed with links to opinions, petitions, and other documents when these are available online.  The Fair Use Project has been active since 2006 working to expand creative freedom by clarifying and expanding the boundaries of fair use.  The content here, as with much of the site, is presented in blog format.  Also available on the site is Packets, the CIS newsletter.  Packets provides a concise digest of recently decided cyberlaw cases. [MM]

UC Berkeley Library's Congressional Research Tutorials
http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/wikis/congresearch/

The tutorials on this site are the work of Jesse Silva, Federal Documents and Political Science Librarian, and Karen Munro, E-Learning Librarian at the University of California, Berkeley. They have created five videos covering the basics of Congressional research using the resource noted in parentheses:  how to find bills from 1989 to present, (Thomas), how to find a report (LexisNexis Congressional), how to find debates from 1873 to present in print (Congressional Record), how to find debates from 1989 to present online (Thomas), and how to contact your federal representatives (Senate and House web pages). The running time for each is noted at the beginning of the tutorial and times vary between two and five minutes. A pause button lets users go at their own pace and practice before moving on.  Each tutorial begins with a statement about what you will learn and concludes with a summary of what you learned. The tutorials use an actual research problem, such as finding a hearing on the 1979 nuclear reactor incident at Three Mile Island and finding debates on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Instruction is given via brief explanatory inserts highlighting relevant parts of the search pages.  The videos automatically click and type on web pages to demonstrate searches. However, a live web page that mirrors the lesson page is at the bottom of each screen if you want to point and click yourself. The tutorial dealing with the print Congressional Record features inserts over print pages and highlights where the debates are found on the page.  All of the tutorials are succinct and can be easily understood by the public as well as by law students and legal professionals. The tutorials give the viewer an appreciation of the scope of information available from each of the resources.  For more experienced researchers, the site features U.S. Congressional Search, a Google application by UC Berkeley that searches selected databases: Thomas, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Government Accountability Office (GAO), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Washington Post, and several others.  [JC]

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InSITE contributors: L. Buechner, J. Callihan, J. Cusker, M. Morrison, J. Pajerek (editor)

InSITE highlights selected law-related Web sites in two ways: as an annotated publication issued electronically and in print; and, as a keyword-searchable database. The law librarians at Cornell evaluate potentially useful Web sites, select the most valuable ones, and provide commentary and subject access to them. This information can be accessed via the channels below, in addition to this mailing list:

1. Searchable database or by browsing current and archived issues on the web:

        InSITE home page ( http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/insiteasp/)

2. RSS feed ( http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/lawlibrary/insiteasp/public/rss.asp )

3. Print format for the Cornell Law School community.

***A note to our readers: The InSITE website has been revamped and now features a quick search on the home page, in addition to the advanced search previously available.  We've also added a great new feature that allows anyone to search all the websites ever annotated by InSITE with a single click.   It's updated with each new issue of InSITE.  We hope you enjoy these new features of InSITE.
The contents of this publication and any recommendations therein are the opinions of the authors and do not reflect the views of Cornell University.

Cornell Law Library URL:  http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library