Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the June 30th, 2008 issue of InSITE:

• Food First: Institute for Food and Development Policy
• FRASER: Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research
• Humanitarian Policy Group
• International Seabed Authority
• Special Court for Sierra Leone

[RJ]

Food First: Institute for Food and Development Policy

The goal of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (a.k.a. Food First) is to "eliminate the injustices that cause hunger" and seek "food sovereignty" through a three-pronged approach: building local food systems, involvement of small-scale farmers, and democratization of development through support of land reform and other social movements. Food First's publications, reports, and press releases all seem to make the point that hunger is most often not a problem of food shortage but of the effects of policies promulgated by governments, corporations, and international trade bodies. The content on the site thus has a notable strain of opposition to the current regime of trade policy, agricultural biotechnology, and agricultural subsidies. Nevertheless, the site has a great deal of good content on agriculture, economics, and international trade policy in its "Publications" section. The site offers "Fact sheets," "Backgrounders," "Development Reports," "Policy Briefs," "News and Views," and "Stories and Field Reports".  Although these categories are poorly differentiated from each other and unevenly updated, the reports and publications on offer are carefully researched and footnoted, offer summaries and tables, and are available in PDF format and, in some cases, in multiple languages. The site is very much by and for activists, but its tone is accessible and generally non-polemical. A search engine is available for the site's contents. [JPC]

FRASER: Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research

FRASER is an acronym for Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research; it is a project of the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.  FRASER’s mission is to facilitate economic research by creating a “public, electronic archive of economic statistical publications and data.” FRASER contains scanned, PDF images of historic economic data, reports, and other publications, and can be used in conjunction with two other economic data resources maintained by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, FRED and ALFRED (links to both sites and other sites are at the top of FRASER’s website).  FRASER has 45 different collections of documents; however, there are gaps within the individual collections.  Collections containing more recent information, or information from ongoing publications such as the Federal Reserve’s Economic Indicators Report, are the most likely to have complete coverage.  In addition to the collection of economic documents, historic documents released by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the St. Louis Federal Reserve are available in the Federal Reserve History section.  FRASER has an advanced search function that allows users to restrict searches by search terms and date, and to filter results by collection and author. [LB]

The Humanitarian Policy Group

The Humanitarian Policy Group (HDG) is sub-group of the Overseas Development Institute, an independent British organization that produces research and policy recommendations on humanitarian aid, the alleviation of poverty, and economic development. HDG's own mission statement identifies it as "one of the world's leading teams of independent researchers and information professionals working on humanitarian issues. It is dedicated to improving humanitarian policy and practice through a combination of high-quality analysis, dialogue and debate." HDG produces reports that evaluate both past and current efforts of the international aid community. The information content of the HDG website lies primarily within its "Publications" section, which offers "Reports," "Policy Briefs," and "Working Papers" as well as a listing of "Commissioned Works" authored by the HDG but sponsored by other organizations. Documents in these sections are arranged in order of publication. A Google-based search engine is available but its utility is limited insofar as the documents on offer are in PDF format. The HDG's publications are high-level documents intended for a specialist audience of researchers and the leadership of international aid organizations, although some interpretative assistance is given for laypeople (i.e. listings of relevant acronyms). The site could have benefited from listings of reports by geographic area or country but the contents are in general well-organized. [JPC]

International Seabed Authority

The International Seabed Authority is "an autonomous international organization established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 1994 Agreement relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea."  The information content of the site--which has English, French and Spanish mirrors--is organized into several areas including "Marine Scientific Research," "Annual Sessions," "News and Events" (aggregating press releases), and "Documents and Publications," which includes such materials as the Convention and legal instruments thereof, and proceedings of the Authority's sessions.  Some of the technical reports cannot be accessed through the site but only ordered in hardcopy.  Among the notable resources which are available, however, are the Central Data Repository on undersea mineral resources and the Map section, identifying the International Seabed Area and depicting the locations of major mineral deposits.  The site has a somewhat imprecise keyword search engine which often fails to turn up relevant hits inside PDF documents.  In general however the site is well-organized and informative, albeit for a highly specialized audience of scholars and policymakers concerned with maritime mining law and environmental research. [JPC]

Special Court for Sierra Leone

Established jointly by the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations, the Special Court for Sierra Leone is "mandated to try those bearing the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed within the territory of Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996."  The website provides links to the current cases and information as to how far the cases have progressed and which cases have been concluded.  There are videos of some of the trials themselves as well as the ability to view Indictments, Summary of the Charges, Court Decisions, Transcripts and Minutes of the Trials.  Recent issues of the Court's monthly newsletter and press releases dating back to September 2002 are available.  Additionally the site includes information on the court itself, how it runs and operates, and its justices.  There is also information on how to contact the Special Court, how to file an amicus  brief and information on available jobs and internships for the Court.  The site is keyword-searchable from a search box on the home page. [SA]

InSITE contributors: S. Allen, L. Buechner, J.P. Cusker, J. Pajerek (editor)

InSITE highlights selected law-related World Wide 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. These information can be accessed as following:

1. Current Issue Edition
2. Archived Issues
3. Searchable Database
4. RSS FEED of the Current Issue Editions [What is RSS?]
5. E-mail subscription: send the following request to lyris@cornell.edu: join INSITE-L 'your name'
   where your name(include the quotation marks) is the name you want to be available to the list's administrator. You must send this message from the e-mail address where you want to receive the e-list's messages.