Brooks Library Research Guides: Law & Justice

Black's Law Dictionary (8th Edition)
Print Location: Reference, 1st Floor, KF156 .B53 2004
Black's Law Dictionary is the standard for legal language in the English-speaking world. In addition to the Dictionary itself this volume also includes:

• alternate spellings or equivalent expressions for more than 5,300 terms and West Key Numbers,
• a Bibliography,
• British regnal years,
• definitions of more than 1,000 law-related abbreviations and acronyms,
• Federal Circuit maps,
• Legal maxims,
• a Table of legal abbreviations,
• the Constitution of the United States of America,
• the date when selected terms were first used in English-language contexts, especially in judicial opinions,
• thousands of quotations drawn from sources over five centuries,
• and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In addition to the copy available in the ARC (Reference) there are also copies available at CWU-Lynnwood and CWU-Des Moines under the same call number.  There is also a copy of an earlier 1999 edition that can be checked out at KF156 .B532 1999 on the Fourth Floor.

Encyclopedia of Police Science

380 entries examine the theoretical and practical aspects of law enforcement, discussing past and present practicesthemes such as accountability, the culture of police, and the legal framework that affects police decision. New topics discuss recent issues, such as Internet and crime, international terrorism, airport safety, or racial profiling. Entries are contributed by scholars as well as experts working in police departments, crime labs, and various fields of policing.  Entries include: administration; communication; criminology; historical personalities; demographics; detection techniques; forensics; history; justice system; legislation; methods of patrol; police management; procedures; psychological issues; public view of police; social issues; significant cases; specific police departments; politics; technology; types of crimes.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

This is a collections of ebooks, available through the library's databases page under "Gale Virtual Reference Library." You can also search for the individual ebooks by title in Cattrax, our online catalog. The G.V.R. Library includes, among many others, the following electronic encyclopedias:

• Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education (2 vols., 2008);
• Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration (2 vols., 2006);
• Encyclopedia of Environment and Society (5 vols., 2007);
• Encyclopedia of American Immigration (4 vols., 2001);
• Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West (2 vols., 2006);
• Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology (2 vols., 2008);
  
• Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society (3 vols., 2008);
• Encyclopedia of Social Psychology (2 vols., 2007).

(Search results in the Gale Virtual Reference Library will include all encyclopedias unless you click on a specific title and use the Quick Search box within the specific title page.)

Oxford Reference Online
Oxford Reference Online, with over 2 million entries, many of which are illustrated, is a superb cross-searchable resource to use when you are at the 'looking for a clue' or 'needing verification' stages of your research.  Oxford Reference provides quality, up-to-date reference content from its extensive series of well-respected books - and unlike Wikipedia you can cite Oxford Reference in a paper!

The Quick Reference materials include information on many Subjects, a series of informative Timelines, a wide variety of Quotations, as well as English Dictionaries, and Bilingual Dictionaries.

The Reference Library is divided into Subject Categories, drawn from the 308 volumes of the Oxford Reference Library.  Those categories are:

Archaeology	Media studies
Art & Architecture	Medicine and health
Bilingual dictionaries	Music
Classical studies	Names studies
Encyclopedias	Performing arts
English Dictionaries and Thesauri	Philosophy
History	Quotations
Language reference	Religion
Law	Science and technology
Linguistics	Social Sciences
Literature	Society and culture

Assistance and advice with using the Quick Reference and the Reference Library are available at this link, and by contacting your friendly neighborhood Brooks Library Librarians.

Notes: The Search Box is in the upper right corner of each Oxford Reference page, with additional options on the left-side and in the center of the page before you scroll down.  Most Oxford Reference results pages are scrollable lists of information, and scrolling is worth doing.
          There is also an Advanced Search available.
          To cite an entry click on the individual entry, the Citation Tool is now visible - it is the 'little pencil' to the right and above the entry that you wish to cite.

Oxford Reference Online: Law

The Oxford Reference Online is a suite of dictionaries, encyclopedias and other reference type resources available through the CWU library's subscription databases page, "Databases by Title".  The database contains a number of resources regarding law, the American law enforcement and court systems, and Supreme Court decisions.

Women and the Law: Leaders, Cases and Documents
Print Location: Ref KF478 .K84 2003
This book analyzes the legal precedents involving women's constitutional, educational, familial, reproductive, safety and workplace rights, provides biographies and essays on "key historical concepts and pioneers" such as feminism and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and contains the full text of important documents tracing the historic development of women and U.S. law.

Brooks Library Online Catalog - CATTRAX
Cattrax is the online catalog that describes nearly all the materials held by the Brooks Library: books, government documents, maps, microforms, journals, and other items.  Below is everything you might want to know about how to use Cattrax - but all you need to know to start searching is summarized in the numbered items and note directly below:

Using Cattrax to find an item in the Brooks Library:
1. Enter a search term – a word, a phrase, whatever – in the search box.

2. Use the drop-down menu to select whether you wish to do a keyword/word search, a title search, a subject search, an author search, or one of the other options.  Click 'Search'.

3. Results that are 'relevant' to the search term that you used will be retrieved.  Examine the results.  Repeat steps 1 through 3 as needed.

*** Note: Information is often described in several different ways; you may need to try a variety of terms before you find ones that provide you with the information you are looking for. And spelling counts.***

More Information about Cattrax:
You can sort the results by 'relevance', date or by title, by clicking on those words below the Search Box.

Click on a title to see a detailed bibliographic record about that title.  The ‘bib record’ will contain a variety of additional information about the book: the author, location, call number, often a summary, status, subject terms, etc.  Any and all of that information can be important clues.

The ‘bib record’ will also have a link to a location map, two ways to send the information to your mobile phone, a citation tool, and will often have book cover images.

You can also save the ‘bib record’ to either ‘My Lists’ (requires you to use your ‘Library Log-in’) or you can ‘Save to Bag’ and remember to email, save, or print the resulting list of titles before you finish your session with Cattrax.

Once you have saved the useful results of your first search you can perform more searches – perhaps starting by opening the author link, the subject terms (towards the bottom of the ‘bib record’), or the 'Call #', in a new browser tab, or using the search box to start a totally new search using what you have learned so far from your search.

(Note: the books are in Call Number order on the shelves and clicking on the "Call #" will display a list of books in something like 'shelf order', which can help you find some good ideas for searching Cattrax.  It is also a good idea to look on the shelves, discovery happens in many ways.)

When you finish your session with Cattrax remember to email, save, or print the ‘Save to Bag’ list of items that you found.

Additional Cattrax Information:

• Note: the “Request” service located in the upper left of a 'bib record' page is only available for Center Campus Students.  This is because the Center Campus Students would need to use more than the stairs or the elevator to get the book from the Brooks Library.  (If you are a Main Campus student wishing to check out a book in a Center Library please consult the Circulation Desk.)


• The ‘Modify Search’ link at the top of any Cattrax page is almost the same as the ‘Advanced Search’ option.  The ‘Modify Search’ option is very useful for narrowing down your list of results.  The "Limit/Sort Search" option is a way to narrow your Subject, Author, or Title search results.


• If you have the citation for an article you can select Journal/Serial Title to find out what kind of access (print/digital, which issues/years) we have to a particular journal.  We often have access to a journal through more than one database.  If you do not succeed in locating the journal or article that you need please consult one of our charming Brooks Library Librarians, or submit a request to our very resourceful Interlibrary Loan Department.


• If your professor said that something you needed to read was 'on Reserve' (the professor may have said 'in the library' or something else roughly equivalent) you can check our Reserved List by searching in Cattrax by course name or by the professor's name.


• Last, but certainly not least, if what you are looking for is not available in Cattrax try repeating your searches in Summit.  Summit enables you to search the catalogs of 37 academic libraries in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and request materials owned by those libraries; a courier service provides near-daily delivery of library materials here to Central Washington University.


• Summit Notes: There is usually a three to five day interval between your making a request and receiving the book, DVD, or other item.  Summit is part of Worldcat.  Each result will have a notation "Libraries that own this item:".  Items owned by a Summit member library can be requested by clicking the purple 'Request Summit Item' button.  Items owned by a Worldcat Library will need to be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

The book collection is shelved on the 3rd (A-J) and 4th (K-Z) floors of the main campus library and shelved by Library of Congress subject classification.  The Government Documents, Maps, and Microforms are on the 3rd floor.  The Music Library is on the 4th floor.  Our physical journal, magazine, and serials collection is on the 2nd floor.  DVDs, video tapes and films are on the 1st floor.  Children's Books are on the 4th floor.  Cattrax also contains links to a variety of e-books, and links to digital materials located elsewhere.

Ebsco eBook Collection
The Brooks Library has permanent access to 3037 digital books from the EBSCO eBook Collection.  EBSCO eBooks are digital full-text versions of books in the areas of:

Children's & Young Adult Nonfiction	Literature & Criticism
Arts & Architecture	Mathematics
Biographies & Memoirs	Philosophy
Business & Economics	Political Science
Computer Science	Psychology
Education	Reference Works
Engineering & Technology	Religion
Fiction	Sciences
General Nonfiction	Self-Help & Family
Health & Medicine	Social Sciences
History	Study Aids & Language Learning
Law

Note: EBSCO's classifications of these books is a bit imaginative, in each of the above categories there will be some books that you would not expect to see in that list.

You can copy and paste from these ebooks, you can access them from off-campus, and you can save portions of them as a pdf.

WorldCat
WorldCat is an essential service run by the imaginatively named Online Computer Library Center (OCLC).  OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs.

WorldCat aspires to be a library catalog for the entire world; it contains all the records cataloged by the more than 72,000 OCLC member libraries around the world.  WorldCat offers millions of bibliographic records and includes records in 400 languages.

The more than 179 million records cataloged by OCLC member libraries include books, manuscripts, websites and internet resources, maps, computer programs, musical scores, films, slides, videotapes, DVDs, newspapers, journals and magazines, sound recordings, articles, chapters, and papers.  The dates covered in WorldCat range from before 1000 BCE to literally earlier today.

The Basic Search is useful when you know precisely what you are looking for.  The Advanced Search is the default search and works well for most everyone.  There is also an Expert Search available in which you can write your own Boolean Search Expressions.

Assistance is available from WorldCat at this link, and from Brooks Librarians at this link.

WorldNews Network
The World News (WN) Network was founded with the goal of being the most comprehensive, one-stop news resource on the Internet.  Currently World News has over 130 million pages indexed covering news about, among many other topics, Film, Sport, Entertainment, Science, Business, Health and every Region on Earth.

World News Network presents news from more than 1000 reputable sources including mainstream providers (BBC, CNN, Reuters, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, etcetera) and more regional and local sources (The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Times of India, etcetera). This aggregation from other sites provides a wide variety of perspectives and different interpretations of breaking news events.

Information is available in two ways through the WN site.  News links that open in a new tab go directly to the headlined article on its original site.  Links that open in the same tab provide you with a link to the article on its original site, there are also links to the left and elsewhere on the page to information that helps you put the news article in context, as well as links to other version of the story or to related stories.

Academic Search Complete

A scholarly, multi-disciplinary database containing more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed, scholarly journals, and with indexing and abstracting for more than 9,300 journals.  Academic Search Complete is an EBSCO database, and like most EBSCO databases it includes a "Choose Databases" link near the top of the page that enables you to search multiple EBSCO databases at the same time (an EBSCO multi-disciplinary database that is good to search at the same time as ASC is "MasterFILE Premier").

If the article whose title and abstract you found is not available in the Academic Search Complete database try clicking on "Search for Full Text".  If that option does not provide you with the full-text of the article please consult a librarian or submit an Interlibrary Loan Request.  Many articles are readily available in another database or through Interlibrary Loan and we are here to help you get the information you need!

ArticleFirst
The Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) provides this index of more than 27,000,000 of the articles published since 1990.  The articles are from over 16,000 journals, covering nearly all fields of knowledge.  The items indexed include every article, news story, letter, or other item listed on the table of contents page of the journal.  This database also provides, for most items, a list of libraries that have the journal title – information that makes finding the article in the Brooks Library Collection, or through Interlibrary Loan, much easier.

Please ask the Reference Help Desk, on the 1st Floor of the Brooks Library, or at (509) 963-1021, for any assistance you might wish in searching this index or searching for citations found in the index.

Criminal Justice Abstracts
Contains indexes and summaries of international journal articles, books, and governmental and non-governmental reports on virtually any topic in criminal justice.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

Abstracts for literature in criminal justice. This database is an index, it does not contain the full text of articles.  You can search further for the full text within another of our databases or for non-electronic format in our catalog, by clicking on the "Search for Full Text" link available on the results page for a particular record.  If you would like more assistance in retrieving the full text of an article, please stop by or call the Reference Desk at 509.963-1021.

PAIS International: Public Affairs Information Service
The PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) International database covers a wide range of current and past public policy issues, emphasizing factual and statistical information.  Business topics are covered, with emphasis on economic factors, industry surveys, business-societal interactions and similar issues, rather than details of business operations.

The PAIS International database is continually updated with information about over half a million journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more from over 120 countries throughout the world.  (Newspapers and newsletters are not usually indexed.)  A useful 'Advanced Search' is available, as well as a way to search for Figures & Tables.

PAIS is an index, it does not contain the full text of articles – but you do not care about that until you find a citation for an article you would like to read.  When you find citations for possibly useful articles you can search for the full text by doing a Journal Title Search.  You can also search for a full text copy through Google Scholar.  As always more assistance in acquiring the full text of an article is available at the Reference Desk.

Note: The PAIS database is provided to us by Proquest. In the upper left corner of the PAIS search page there is a link that will say “Searching:1 database”.  If you click that link you will see a list of the 9 databases that you can select and search through this interface.  In addition to PAIS you can also search:

• ERIC‎ (1966 - current),
• PAIS International‎  (1972 - current),
• Physical Education Index‎ (1970 - current),
• PILOTS: Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress‎ (1871 - current),
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I‎ (1639 - current),
• ProQuest Newsstand‎ (1984 - current),
• Social Services Abstracts‎ (1979 - current),
• Sociological Abstracts‎ (1952 - current), and
• The Wall Street Journal‎ (1984 - current).

(Three of these databases are fulltext. The Proquest Sitemap page can provide you with information about some useful options.)

Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL)

The Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL) is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Grants and Training and the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Homeland Defense and Security. The Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL) is the nation's premier collection of homeland security policy and strategy related documents.

National Institute of Justice
NIJ is the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice and is dedicated to researching crime control and justice issues. NIJ provides objective, independent, evidence-based knowledge and tools to meet the challenges of crime and justice, particularly at the State and local levels.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC)

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) is a data gathering, data research and data distribution organization at Syracuse University.  The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people, Congress, news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars, and lawyers, with comprehensive information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government.

Because comprehensive and relevant records about what an agency is doing — and not doing — are essential to meaningful oversight, TRAC continuously uses the Freedom of Information Act to obtain new data about government enforcement and regulatory activities.

While many TRAC activities are fee-supported, with the information behind a paywall, the TRAC Public Web Site contains highly detailed and easy-to-access information on selected federal enforcement agencies, special topical reports, and "bulletins" about federal enforcement, staffing and expenditures. The information — featuring colorful maps and graphs and tens of thousands of pages of tables and other supporting material — is available without charge to anyone with access to the web. Currently featured are TRAC sites describing the enforcement activities and staffing patterns of the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

TRAC-Immigration, deals in-depth with how United States immigration laws are enforced in administrative and criminal courts by a wide variety of agencies. Reports include records of individual judges. A reference library containing reports and government immigration studies and a glossary are also maintained.

This site is an excellent one to search if you are in need of government information.  If it appears that the information you need is behind the TRAC paywall please consult one of our talented Reference or Government Documents Librarians.
 

USA.gov - Official Government Web Portal

USA.gov is the U.S. government web portal to all federal, state, tribal, and local government web resources and services. USA.gov is intended to help people navigate government information, procedures, and policies.

Through USA.gov you can apply for benefits online (including grants), contact a government agency or department, or use the most comprehensive search of government websites.  You can also search for Government Publications, for information specifically relevant to you, and for contact information for government employees and officials.
 

NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] Style Manual: A Guide for Legal Writing in Plain English

Similar to The Elements of Legal Style KF250 .G37 2002, this guide is accessible on the web. It also includes some examples of proper citations and some rules of citation.

Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy

Yale Law School hosts a wonderful primary source website, with materials in collections as far-reaching as 4000 b.c.e. to the 21st Century.  Included are the full text of laws, colony charters, acts, and declarations, presidential proclamations, treaties and formal negotiations affecting the United States judiciary system and governmental foreign policy in general. 

From this page, you can also access Project Diana: the Human Rights collection (which provides full text of major court decisions regarding human rights) and The International Military Tribunal for Germany--A Document Collection.  It contains materials from the Nuremburg Trials, including day by day transcript testimony of those tried for war crimes.

American Academy of Forensic Psychology

The American Academy of Forensic Psychology is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education for psychologists. AAFP maintains responsibility for its programs.

American Academy of Forensic Scientists
The AAFS, a nonprofit professional society organized in 1948, is devoted to the improvement, the administration, and the achievement of justice through the application of science to the processes of law.

American Bar Association
The largest voluntary professional association in the world. With more than 400,000 members, the ABA provides law school accreditation, continuing legal education, information about the law, programs to assist lawyers and judges in their work, and initiatives to improve the legal system for the public.

American Society of Criminology
The American Society of Criminology is an international organization concerned with criminology, embracing scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the etiology, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency. This includes the measurement and detection of crime, legislation, the practice of criminal law, as well as a review of the law enforcement, judicial, and correctional systems.

Center for Democracy and Technology

The mission of the Center for Democracy & Technology is to conceive and implement public policies that will keep the Internet open, innovative, and free.  CDT fights for the right of individuals to communicate, publish and make their own choices about the information they share and receive on the Internet.

CDT has established ongoing working groups that bring together companies, trade associations, public interest groups, technologists, and academics.  Current working groups and articles by the members can be found under these labels:

• Free Expression,
• Consumer Privacy,
• Health Privacy,
• Security & Surveillance,
• Digital Copyright,
• Internet Openness & Standards,
• International Issues,
• and Open Government.

Official Directory of State Patrol and State Police

Directory of state trooper and sheriff-related Web sites for each of the fifty United States. In addition to each state's official state police and state government Web sites, there are links to its police academies and associations, history, news, articles and more.

Young Forensic Scientists Forum
The Young Forensic Scientists Forum (YFSF) is a group within the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) that is dedicated to the education, enrichment and development of emerging forensic scientists and future leaders of the field. The participants of the YFSF are drawn from all sections and membership levels of the AAFS. The YFSF provides an avenue for new forensic scientists to interact with and become part of the established forensic science community.

Cultures of the States: A Handbook on the Effectiveness of State Governments
Print Location: Ref JK2408 .F79 2003
Looks at the factors of the culture found within States: power, taxes, race, gender, crime and punishment, mortality and health, education, economic factors and "problems profiles."

FBI Uniform Crime Reports
Includes FBI crime statistics based on local and state police reports. Uniform Crime Reports are also available in Crime in the U.S., an annual publication in Government Documents Reference, J 1.14/7, with older volumes in the stacks.

Federal Sentencing Statistics by State, District, and Circuit

Statistics from the U.S. Sentencing Commission is provided by circuit court and state.

FedStats

"Provides access to statistics and information produced by more than 70 U.S. government agencies. Searchable through an A-Z subject index, keyword searching of agency web sites linked to FedStats, "fast facts" linkage to frequently requested tables from the Statistical Abstract, as well as direct links to agency contacts, news releases, and other navigational and organizational aids."

NationMaster.com

NationMaster is the world's largest online database for comparing countries in the world, with all of the same features in StateMaster, as well as an educational area with free lesson plans and the unique GeoLabs, which give students all over the world an opportunity to navigate through the database and send results to their teacher via e-mail. 

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics
Compilation of statistics from the Bureau of Justice which focus on crime, criminals, judicial processing, corrections, etc. Browse by topical index or keyword search.

StateMaster.com

StateMaster is a free resource which allows users to compare US States with over 3,000 different statistics. The site has graphing, plotting, mapping and correlation tools, as well as thousands of maps and flags and detailed state profiles.

World Almanac

Desk reference tool for factual information.

Guide to Law Online
This guide links to Internet sites on many aspects of U.S. law, including the U.S. Constitution, federal legislation, U.S. Code and public laws, federal courts, NAFTA, WTO, and other types of legal information on the Internet.

Legal Information Institute
From the Cornell University School of Law. The LII is known internationally as a leading "law-not-com" provider of public legal information. Offers all opinions of the United States Supreme Court handed down since 1992, together with over 600 earlier decisions selected for their historic importance, over a decade of opinions of the New York Court of Appeals, and the full United States Code. We also publish important secondary sources: libraries in two important areas (legal ethics and social security) and a series of "topical" pages that serve as concise explanatory guides and Internet resource listings for roughly 100 areas of law.

NCJRS National Criminal Justice Reference Service

NCJRS is a federally funded resource offering justice and substance abuse information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide. A limited full-text publication search is available for free, as well as abstracts and statistics.

The Uniform Crime Report

The FBI compiles a variety of annual statistics, reports, and publications on crimes in the United States including topics such as Hate Crimes.

AllLaw - Legal Information
A collection of legal resources and links to legal information.  This site may not fully answer your questions, but it will probably be helpful for anyone doing law-related research.

Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBI home page. Includes FBI facts and figures, history, crime alerts, crime statistics, reports on major investigations, more.

First Amendment Center

The First Amendment Center, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and in Arlington, Va., operates this Web site. Features comprehensive research coverage of key First Amendment issues and topics, daily First Amendment news, a unique First Amendment Library and guest analyses by respected legal specialists.

Hieros Gamos: The Comprehensive Law and Government Site
"Hieros Gamos 'is the largest and only comprehensive legal site with over 20,000 original pages and more than 70,000 links.' Various databases contain information on legal organizations including every government in the world, practice areas, "doing business" guides, news, and online seminars. The online law library contains extensive reference works, including many foreign language dictionaries."

Indian Law Resource Center
"Legal advocacy for the protection of indigenous peoples' human rights, cultures, and traditional lands so that Indian tribes and nations may flourish for generations to come."

Internet Law Library
The Internet Law Library (formerly the U.S. House of Representatives Internet Law Library) was originally provided to the public courtesy of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives. This was part of the Counsel's mission to make the law available to the public. The site provided links to a large number of legal resources relating to American (federal and state) and foreign laws.

Internet Legal Research Group
Provides a categorized index of over 3000 legal web sites, with an emphasis on U.S. legal information, especially law schools, law journals, law firms and professional associations on the web.

Internet Legal Resources
From the University of Washington Law Library, provides legal information and materials (including laws, bills, court opinions, and related documents) and/or links to legal material.

Internet Public Library Arts & Humanities Resources

Interesting and sometimes educational websites are featured on this annotated, topical gateway of websites.  Each website is recommended and annotated by a librarian working for the Librarians Internet Index as a quality resource.  You can also quickly group resources by domain type, so it is easy to see which sites are commercial, from organizations, and from the government.

Law and Policy Institutions Guide
Provides a well-organized point of access for legal and legislative information. In addition to domestic legal topics, this site provides information on significant international treaties, journals, and legal databases ranging from antiquity to the present and representing all nationalities.

Law Library Resource Xchange
LLRX.com is a unique, free Web journal dedicated to providing legal, library, IT/IS, marketing and administrative professionals with the most up-to-date information on a wide range of Internet research and technology-related issues, applications, resources and tools, since 1996.

Native American Rights Fund
Founded in 1970, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is the oldest and largest nonprofit law firm dedicated to asserting and defending the rights of Indian tribes, organizations and individuals nationwide. NARF's practice is concentrated in five key areas: the preservation of tribal existence; the protection of tribal natural resources; the promotion of human rights; the accountability of governments; and the development of Indian law and educating the public about Indian rights, laws, and issues.

OAIster Catalog of Digital Resources
OAIster is a catalog more than 25 million records of open access digital resource.  The Catalog was built by harvesting information from open access collections around the world  The digital resources in OAIster include items such as digitized books and articles, born-digital texts, audio files, images, and movies.

The OAIster Catalog is searchable by title, author/creator, subject, language, keyword and several other forms of metadata.  Searching in the OAIster Catalog is by Boolean Search (And, Or, Not).  Like playing chess the best way to become good at boolean searching is to do a lot of boolean searching.  Here are the 'basic moves' for searching the OAIster Catalog:

Combining the search terms 'Cat' and 'Dog' (Boolean)
    Cat and Dog
    Cat or Dog
    Cat not Dog
Note: 'and', 'or', & 'not' are in drop-down boxes to the left of the search boxes.

Plurals, truncation, and wildcards
    Use + for plurals (s and es)
    Use * for truncation
    Use # for a wildcard character
    Use ?N for up to N characters

Adjacent terms (proximity)
    Cat w Dog    (Cat is followed by Dog)
    Cat wN Dog  (Cat is followed by Dog with at most N terms between)
    Cat n Dog     (Cat is next to Dog, either order)
    Cat nN Dog   (Cat is within N terms of Dog, either order)

The available Limiters are Year, Document Type, and Language.  A Basic Search and an Expert Search interface is also available.  You can also create an account that will enable you to save searches.

NOTE:  Sometimes OAIster may direct you to items that are access restricted.  The Librarians in the ARC or at any of the service desks can help you with accessing information that is ‘access restricted’ and with any questions that you might have.

Officer.Com: Law Enforcement Resource Site
"The criminal justice resource directory links to US federal and constitutional law sites, law libraries, and criminal justice resources by state. Criminal justice issues by topic include computer laws, hate crimes, terrorism, prison issues, and firearms.

Southern Poverty Law Center
"This organization combats hate, intolerance and discrimination through education and litigation. Includes Klanwatch and Militia Task Force, which monitor white supremacist and extremist activity, Legal Action, current and historical civil rights cases, and Teaching Tolerance, excerpts from this free to educators magazine, including an excellent, annotated, Recommended Reading list."