Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the November 17th, 2008 issue of InSITE:

• Audiovisual Library of International Law
• FARAdb: Foreign Agent Registration Act Database
• Nuremberg Trials and Their Legacy
• Women's Environment & Development Organization

The UN Audiovisual Library of International Law (ALIL) serves primarily to facilitate the teaching, study, and appreciation of international law across the globe.  It is a unique multimedia resource that combines still images, documentation, video clips, and audio recordings to illustrate and explain issues of international law generally, and within specific subject areas.  The site is organized into three primary areas.  First, the Historic Archives provide materials and documentation evidencing the negotiation and adoption of major UN legal instruments since 1945.  Second, the Lecture Series features video lectures on a wide range of international subjects by leading scholars from different countries and legal systems.  Third and finally, the Research Library contains extensive, well organized, links to free, reputable, and authoritative international law sites with jurisprudence, treaties, publications and documents, and scholarly works and research guides.  While ALIL can surely be used to provide supplemental teaching materials, it also serves as an excellent international law research resource in its own right. [JJ]

The Foreign Agent Registration Act database (FARAdb) is a project of the Sunlight Foundation.  The Foundation “supports, develops and deploys new Internet technologies to make information about Congress and the federal government more accessible to the American people.”  With the FARAdb, Sunlight Foundation seeks to make available to the public information about lobbying done on behalf of foreign governments.  The Act requires that lobbyists file biannual reports detailing which members of Congress were contacted, the country represented by the lobbyist, and the specific issues discussed during the contact.  The database, dubbed “an experiment and a work in progress,” contains lobbyist filings from 2006 and 2007 representing fifteen foreign countries.  While this is a fraction of the data available, Sunlight Foundation strives for geographical diversity in the database.  Users may search the database by legislator, client, lobbying firm, or contact issue.  Each record provides details of each contact made, including date of contact, lobbyist, lobbying firm, country represented, method of contact, legislator contacted, and the issues discussed during the contact.  While the database is new, it is one to watch. [MM]

The Nuremberg Trials and Their Legacy is an online exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and offers descriptions of various aspects of the trials including the laws and principles at stake, the profiles of the defendants and participants, the decisions reached and the long-term legacy of the trials.  Most of these are links to relevant sections of the overarching "Holocaust Encyclopedia" maintained by the USHMM and with additional contextual links to "Testimony," "Artifacts" and "Programs" (listings of relevant upcoming events at the museum).  The "Testimony" section is particularly compelling, presenting videos and accompanying transcriptions of the recollections of some of those involved in the prosecution of the Nuremberg trials.  A good search engine is available on the site, but again this serves as an index for the overall Holocaust Encyclopedia, not the Nuremberg Trials online exhibit specifically. [JPC]

The Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), founded in 1991 by Bella Abzug and Mim Kelber, is a global human rights organization that advocates on behalf of women with an emphasis on social, economic, health and political issues.  Working primarily within forums such as the United Nations, WEDO performs its advocacy through four specific programs: Economic and Social Justice, Gender and Governance, Sustainable Development, and U.S. Global Policy.  A notable element of the website includes an effort to educate the reader about women’s issues through the “WEDO Library.”  The WEDO Library provides links to free downloadable articles, governmental reports and declarations, and organizational newsletters.  These resources are broadly organized by topic and most are available in either MS Word or Adobe PDF. There is no further organization of the articles beyond the primary topics under which they are grouped, and although there initially appears to be a fair selection of resources, there is some redundancy as several resources are listed under more than one topic.  WEDO’s most recent newsletter dates back to July 2008; however the “Press Room” section does offer several current downloadable press releases including one as recent as November 10, 2008.  The site is well organized and easily navigable with a consistent tool bar provided at the top and side of every page, but the most efficient way to find a particular author or topic is to use the basic search engine powered by Google. A user may sign up to receive news from WEDO by email, and may even designate the topics about which he or she would like to receive emails, and whether those emails should be delivered only in text.  This is a simple website with a narrow focus on content, ultimately providing the reader with a full understanding of the organization’s purpose and the issues underlying that purpose. [AE]

InSITE contributors: J.P. Cusker, A. Emerson, J.Jones, 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.