Criminal Information Links - BJS

I initially thought criminal information links would make a great theme. However, once I started, I realized there are just too many and the topic is just too broad! Where should I begin? After looking over a lot of it, I decided the most logical beginning would be with the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). So, that's where I'll begin this week and then we'll see where it goes from there.

If you're really into statistics, you can sign up here to be notified via e-mail whenever new crime and justice statistics become available from BJS, the FBI and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Since government data takes a long time to get processed, we often end up looking at data that is two to three years old. Here's the place to go for the latest data added to the BJS Web site. You can access their "key facts at a glance" or their most recent Crime and Justice Electronic Data Abstracts spreadsheets.

Here's the link for the alphabetical list of BJS publications available in electronic format.

Feed Link of the Day - Schneier on Security

Schneier on Security - "A weblog covering security and security technology." This blog covers all kinds of security issues including election system security problems, airport screening, identity theft and computer security.

Ethics - Legal

The American Bar Association's Center for Professional Responsibility has a great site for links to state ethics opinions, codes, hotlines and more. The site lists the states in alphabetical order with links under each.

LegalEthics.com posts legal ethics announcements on their main page. You can also go here to find ethics sources by state.

Freivogel on Conflicts is "A practical online guide to conflicts of interest for lawyers with sophisticated business and litigation practices." It's kept up-to-date and has a table of contents you can browse.

The National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC) lists their "Cases of the Month - Featured Disciplinary Cases" here.

For European legal ethics, visit the Council of the Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE). You'll find the Code of Conduct for Lawyers in the European Union in 14 languages (at the time of this post) here. They also have a nice list of links that includes links for international, American, Asian and CCBE observer member legal sites here.

Revenge of the Blog People - Hot Topic

Well, I think it's safe to say the "Revenge of the Blog People!" commentary in Library Journal, written by ALA president-elect, Michael Gorman, is the hot library topic today (at least in the blogging community). Why? Well, let's just say that it's not very thoughtful. Click here to read a post at librarian.net with links to Mr. Gorman's commentary and responses from bloggers. Click here to see what Steven Cohen of Library Stuff had to say about it.

Later additions: here are comments from LISNews and from Law Librarian Blog. This was just added as a second post by librarian.net (so new I haven't even read it!).

Since I've been providing ethics links this week, here is where you can find ALA's Code of Ethics.

More on Search Engines

Wednesday's Feed Link of the Day was SearchEngineJournal. I mentioned that if you wanted more, related blogs, to visit an earlier FLOTD site, SearchEngineWatch and check out the blogroll there. Yesterday, SearchEngineJournal posted a great list of blogs containing more search engine blogs. You can check it out here.

Feed Link of the Day - Law Dawg Blawg

I have mentioned Law Dawg Blawg a few times in the past, but have not made it my Feed Link of the Day yet. However, it is certainly a blog that deserves attention. I often find very useful information there. It is maintained by law librarians at Southern Illinois University. Diane Murley often posts really wonderful research tips including Lexis and Westlaw search tips that would be beneficial to any user. If you haven't already checked it out, now is the time.

By the way, they also have an Archive of Research Tips here.

Feed Link of the Day - Feedster's Feed of the Day

Today's Feed Link of the Day is Feedster's Feed of the Day (which oddly enough, shows up in my blogroll as Feedster's Blog of the Day - I think Feedster may have changed the name of this daily feed without changing the name in the link.). Here's the feed for the Feed of the Day (Was that confusing?).

An important thing to note about Feedster is its ability to formulate a feed of your choosing. When you perform a search on Feedster, you not only get a list of results, youl also get an orange button to access the results as an RSS feed. So, you can add your search to your aggregator and get updates on it. For example, you can click here to see the search results for "tiger reagan library" and here to see the feed.

There are many more things you can do at Feedster. When you get the chance, it's definitely worth checking out the site.

Ethics - Business

BELL: The Business Ethics Links Library - This site describes their searchable database as one that "provides access to codes of ethics for U.S. companies and trade and professional associations, ethics sites at college and university business programs, industry information resources, and company promotion of social responsibility covering such topics as arts assistance, environmental clean up, charitable giving and community programming." That's a mouthful (if not a run-on sentence)! The site is part of the William M. White Business Library, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Business Ethics Magazine has posted a really nice links directory on their site. Not only does it contain links for each subject, but it also has phone numbers and e-mail addresses as well.
If you're interested in what the Open Directory Project has on business ethics, here's where to go to check it out. If you want to know more about the Open Directory Project, click here.
The International Business Ethics Institute has a good resources page that includes a Business Ethics Primer, News Room, bibliography and links.

State Legal Sources

A previously mentioned FLOTD was The University of Michigan's Documents Center. If you haven't checked out that site, it's worth a look today. They posted a really nice list of State Legal Sources on the Web that includes start dates. The list has links to each state's bills, laws, constitutions, regulations, attorney general opinions and even newspapers. Very nice!

Ethics - General

Interestingly enough, my week of blogging about ethics links coincides with a "more ethical" blog. I will now have a disclaimer on the site.

Ethics Update is a good site for general ethics. On the home page, Lawrence M. Hinman of the University of San Diego has separated out his links into three columns. The first is "Ethical Theory" and includes links to materials on Aristotle, Kant and Utilitarianism. The second column is "Resources" and has reviews, forums, an up-to-date calendar, reference room, glossary, etc. The third column lists topics of "Applied Ethics."

At the Ethics Resource Center, you will find articles, books, links, news, speeches and more. Here is the description of the ERC from their site:

"The Ethics Resource Center (ERC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization whose vision is a world where individuals and organizations act with integrity. The mission of the Ethics Resource Center is to strengthen ethical leadership worldwide by providing leading-edge expertise and services through research, education and partnerships.
The Ethics Resource Center strives to:

• Inspire individuals to act ethically towards one another
• Inspire institutions to act ethically, recognizing their role as transmitters of values
• Inspire individuals and institutions to join together in fostering ethical communities"

More on RSS

Check out this great post by Diane Murley of Law Dawg Blawg: "What is a Site or RSS Feed?"

Feed Link of the Day - SearchEngineJournal

I've made two other search engine blogs the Feed Link of the Day, so I thought I'd add just one more. So, here's the link for SearchEngineJournal. I can only handle three at a time in my aggregator. If you want more, SearchEngineWatch Blog has a nice little blogroll of additional search engine blogs.

As long as I'm writing about search engines, take a look, I mean a good look at all of Google's features here. Did you know you can search patent numbers and get a direct link to that patent in the USPTO database?

You might also want to check out the Google Cheat Sheet (Adam Schwartz posted this link at Google Weblog today.).

A Lunch Post (Post Lunch)

I promised to occasionally blog about lunch, so here's a link (even though I ran out of time to post during lunch and it's actually dinner time now) from Alice at It's All Good. She writes about places to eat in Honolulu. Right now Hawaiian food (Hawaiian anything) sounds mighty nice!

If you're not familiar with It's All Good, here's the description of their blog:

"A blog from 3 OCLC Online Computer Library Center staff about all things present and future that impact libraries and library users. A conversation that starts with the Environmental Scan and wanders around from there. This content is not vetted by OCLC. Everything you read is purely the personal reflections about what's going on in libraryland, informed by our birds-eye views from the center of the WorldCat universe (Dublin, Ohio, USA). http://www.oclc.org/"

Ethics - Non-U.S. & Media

This first site I'm going to mention is a links library titled, Codes of Conduct/Practice/Ethics from Around the World. While it doesn't appear to have been updated in over two years (I e-mailed the WebMaster and the e-mail was returned to me.), it still may be useful because some of the links link outside that site. Those that are posted within the site often provide a Web address or e-mail address so you can follow up that way. Also, you might be able to find things posted at this site that have since been removed from official sites.

A partial description of the site says: "This list started as a collection of codes of conduct, codes of practice, or codes of ethics from around the world, as part of an IFIP study of codes led by Dr. Jacques Berleur, Univ. Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, Belgium." It is currently being housed on a Virginia Tech server.

For European Codes of Journalism, you can visit EthicNet. Like the VT site, this Finnish (University of Tampere) one doesn't appear to have been updated recently, but the list is pretty extensive and the contact information looks impressive.

For U.S. media sites, you might want to start with the Society of Professional Journalists. This page contains a text of their code as well as links to "Ethics News," "Ethics Hotline," "SPJ Ethics Listserv," "SPJ Ethics Committee," information regarding Ethics in Journalism Week (April 25-30, 2005) and "Other Ethics Sources."

Indiana University's School of Journalism has a page with Journalism Ethics Cases Online. The case topics are listed on the left side and will connect you to the list of specific cases under each topic.

There is a lot of debate about whether or not bloggers are journalists. While, I don't consider AbsTracked to be even remotely related to journalism, there are many bloggers who do write about current news and fit into that debate topic a little more appropriately. That being written, it does seem that all Web sites, be they blogs or others, do have an ethical obligation to uphold. CyberJournalist.net has posted a model Bloggers Code of Ethics based on the Society of Professional Journalists (see above) Code of Ethics. Jonathan Dube's comments in the preface to the Bloggers Code of Ethics, are certainly worth posting here:

"Some bloggers recently have been debating what, if any, ethics the Weblog community should follow. Since not all bloggers are journalists and the Weblog form is more casual, they argue they shouldn't be expected to follow the same ethics codes journalists are. But responsible bloggers should recognize that they are publishing words publicly, and therefore have certain ethical obligations to their readers, the people they write about, and society in general."

Feed Link of the Day - SearchEngineWatch Blog

Since I mentioned the Google Weblog last week, I thought I'd add a more general search engine blog. SearchEngineWatch Blog will keep you current on what's new with the various search engines you use.

Ethics Links

Since (for now at least) this is a business daily blog, I won't be posting over the weekend nor on the Presidents' Day holiday this Monday. That being stated, here is a sneak preview into one of the themes I will be covering next week:

Illinois Institute of Technology's Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions has a really neat index of ethics codes that you can browse by topic or search. I like the way they set this up. When you find the organization you want, you get links to the organizations' Web sites along with older versions of ethics codes and supporting materials if available.

Here is a good example. Click on the link to see the 1988 Code of Ethics for the Direct Selling Association. Not only do you get the 1988 code, but you also get links to 1975 and 1981 versions. It lets you know that there was an original 1970 version as well. Though the 1970 version is not available on this site, it provides a link to the association's Web site so that you can contact them if you need to get a copy of it or if you need to verify that the code has not been updated since 1988. Pretty cool!

Feed Link for the Weekend - ACS Blog

The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy's Blog always seems to have something worth reading. Check it out here. Here's the feed: www.acsblog.org/index.xml.

US Congressional (& many other) Links - Old Documents

A lot of people think you can't find anything on the Web that was written before the early '90s. However, there are actually a lot of very old documents available out there if you know where to look.

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is LC's (Library of Congress) American Memory Collection. It houses U.S. Congressional documents and debates from 1774-1875. You can search, you can browse, you can read a text reprint or you can print out a very clear image of the actual document.

If you think 1774 is old, check out Yale's Avalon Project. Sure, you can get plenty of old U.S. congressional documents here, but you can also get lots of state and foreign materials too. How about the Laws of the Kings, 753-510 B.C. Is that old enough for you? That site separates its documents out into centuries from the 18th-21st and then, of course, there are the "pre-18th" century documents.

If we're traveling back before the American Revolution, perhaps we should sidetrack to England for a minute. There is an amazing amount of British history documents to be found here. I like the Parliamentary History page that contains the text of many old House of Lords and House of Commons volumes. Here's what was happening on this day in the House of Lords in 1697.

Back to the U.S. now...another nice site is 100 Milestone Documents from NARA. There are a lot of interesting historical documents at this site including my favorite, Thomas Edison's patent application for the light bulb.

Many people use Kappler's (Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, compiled and edited by Charles J. Kappler - an historically significant, seven volume compilation of U.S. treaties, laws and executive orders pertaining to Native American Indian tribes) either in hard copy volumes or through Hein Online. Did you know you can also access and search all seven volumes at this Oklahoma State University Library site? Like LC's collection, they have nice print images too.

Of course, you can't talk about congressional documents without referencing GPO. You might want to check out their Core Documents of U.S. Democracy. It starts with the "Cornerstone Documents" which is basically a top 10 list that includes the the Articles of Confederation, Bill of Rights, Constitution, etc. and goes onto the many other documents they house on their Web site.

Now, for something that's really not old, but that I should have worked in earlier this week, you might want to go here to search prior versions of the U.S. Code. The Law Revision Counsel links the 1988 edition with laws through 1/2/91 up to the most recent version.

Google and FedEx

This is completely unrelated to my theme, but I liked it so much I had to add it. Ernie the Attorney (His blawg is a must-add to your aggregator. Moments ago he posted something that is closely related to the theme I had planned for next week, so now I have some stuff to read over the long weekend. More work!) points out here that you can track FedEx shipments on Google. You just enter the FedEx number into the search box. Look here to see Ernie's example. How cool is that?!

As long as I'm on the topic of Google, I might as well add a link to the Google Weblog. It's a great read and you'll be up to speed on any new features Google has added. Of course, if you're like me, you'll forget them a month later, but that's why we subscribe to so many blogs, right?

Feed Link of the Day - UM's Document Center

Since I'm covering links to documents on the Web today, I thought I'd use that same theme for my feed link of the day. So, today's feed is the University of Michigan's Document Center. They just added the biography of John Negroponte who was nominated by President Bush yesterday to be the first National Intelligence Director. Another new item available on that site is Redefining Rights in America: The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration 2001-2004. You can't miss the XML (RSS) feed button on the site!

Of course, now that I'm mentioning civil rights, that makes me think of a great site for historical civil rights documents. Check out the Thurgood Marshall Law Library's Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights documents database. The documents go back to 1957. You can browse them by title, date, subject matter or sudoc number.

US Congressional Links - Bill Tracking

As you probably know, Thomas is the official place to go for bill tracking data. You can follow the path of the bill in Congress, obtain copies of bills from various stages as well as reports, debate, etc. If you haven't visited Thomas recently, you might not be aware of the fact that it has undergone some changes. You can read about those changes at LLRX. Peggy Garvin has written THOMAS: A New Congress, A Few Changes.

Earlier this year a lot of blogs were talking about another bill tracking site; the new GovTrack. It's an interesting site with a database that takes information from Thomas as well as from other sites and cross-references them. I especially like the "Money Trail" that shows up under a piece of legislation. You can see an example here (the money trail is about mid-way down). That information is pulled from OpenSecrets. GovTrack also allows you to monitor the legislation in which you are interested.

Here is a partial description from the GovTrack Web site:

"GovTrack.us fills the need for a source of information useful for people. It is both a large collection of data as well as a tool for filtering out what you don't want to see. You can dig deep in GovTrack, finding information the mass media does not have room for, and you can let GovTrack send information to you, like a newspaper customized to your interests. It's the power of the Internet put to use to close the citizen-country divide.

On this site you'll find the status of legislation, the speeches of representatives on the House and Senate floors, voting records, campaign contribution summaries, and more, plus the opinions of other users through their blog entries. And you can follow only the issues that interest you through email updates and RSS feeds."

RSS Feeds

I'd like to share an interesting post I saw today from Joe Hodnicki at the Law Librarian Blog. He mentions an article featured in the ABA's Law Practice Today by Frederick Faulkner regarding "What's BIG in 2005." Mr. Faulkner predicts RSS feeds are really going to take off this year. Let's hope he's right! It's worth a look here.

Feed Link of the Day - Jurist Paper Chase

The Feed Link of the Day is Jurist - Paper Chase. This blawg is done by "20 law student reporters and editors led by Professor Bernard Hibbitts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law" and they describe it as "Serious law. Breaking news. Factual reports. Original sources. Global perspective." That is why this blawg just might be the most important one to many law librarians as well as others in the field of law. It really is an excellent blawg.

Related, I saw that WisBlawg had a post yesterday that Jurist now lists live legal WebCasts. WisBlawg says:

"According to Professor Bernard Hibbitts, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of JURIST, the webcasts cover US House and Senate proceedings, important Congressional committee hearings, law-related UN meetings & policy briefings, White House briefings, legal news-related lectures and presentations from law schools, universities and think-tanks, etc."

You can read that post here. I looked for the list on the site and noticed that it (like just about everything else on their site) has an RSS feed. You can add it to your aggregator with this link: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/live/blogger_rss.xml.

US Congressional Links - Legislative Histories

Most people cringe when they hear the words "legislative history." However, it doesn't have to be that way. There are a lot of useful tools on the Web that can help. For starters, if you need to grasp the basics of how a bill becomes a law, there's a nice little visual from Westlaw here (it also has nice links into Westlaw's databases, of course).

If you're more verbal than visual, check out Kent-Chicago College of Law's Federal Legislative History Tutorial. I must confess, I haven't spent the time to read through the entire thing, but it looks excellent and is full of great links. Plus, it's referenced by Karen Hogenboom's Congressional Information for Historians site. Have you ever had a cite to Poore or Greeley? Check it out.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention LLSDC's Legislative Source Book compiled by members of the organization's Legislative Research Special Interest Section. It's really packed full of useful documents and links.

I think I could spend an eternity on this subject, but you'll be glad to know I'm done with this topic for now. The US Congressional Links theme will continue for the rest of the week. I have a new theme in the works for next week and may give a sneak peek on Friday evening.

Feed Link of the Day - ResouceShelf's DocuTicker

I have found ResourceShelf's DocuTicker to be a very interesting and varied blog to monitor. In their own words it is "a daily update of new reports from government agencies, ngo's, think tanks, and other groups. DocuTicker is compiled by the librarians who bring you ResourceShelf.com." While I'm at it, I might as well add ResourceShelf as a recommended blog too!

I also want to direct you to Excited Utterances, Peter Scott's Library Blog and the University of Baltimore Law Library Weblog. And it's not just because they mentioned AbsTracked in their blogs (thank you!). These are all great blogs that I monitor myself. I definitely recommend them.

Feed Link(s) of the Day - Finding People

The Feed Link of the Day is actually going to consist of two feeds today because they follow a similar theme. The first is The Virtual Chase. I'm mentioning this one now because they have posted the first part of Genie Tyburski's "How To Conduct a Background Check." This was originally published in the October/November 2004 issue of Law Office Computing.

The second related feed is Marcus Zillman's Finding People. I love this site! This is true one-stop shopping, so get rid of those pesky Favorites and Bookmarks. Trash the e-mail message you have saved with links. It's all here. Just keep scrolling down and you'll find what you need.

I found Eliyon at Finding People. It's a great resource for linking people to their employers. I have used it successfully many times. However, just recently I tried my own name and to my surprise, I found listed under "other titles held" the title of "Senator." So, like with anything, be sure to double-check your results!

Update: Eliyon change to ZoomInfo. Read that post here. The second half of Genie Tyburski's "How To Conduct a Background Check" was posted on Virtual Chase. Read that post (with a link to it) here.

US Congressional Links - More on CRS & Directories

Continuing with yesterday's congressional theme, I'd like to add one more link for CRS reports. Stephen Young has a wonderful guide that will give you a great background on these reports and provides a wonderful supplement to all of the other materials I mentioned earlier. It's definitely worth your time. You can read it at LLRX here.

Yesterday, I mentioned the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for congressional bios going back to the Continental Congress. If you want something a little more in-depth for the current Congress, try out C-SPAN's Congressional Directory here. You can search committees, leadership positions, key phone numbers, etc. If you search for a Senator or Representatives by name, you will get a picture, contact, committee and background information. You will also get election information including PAC contributions. You can also link to key votes, staff information and press releases. Whew!

To familiarize yourself with the new 109th Congress, you might also want to take a peek at the New Member Pictorial Directory.

Thank Yous

I'd like to pretend I'm at the Oscars and thank Sabrina Pacifici of beSpacific, Monica Bay of The Common Scold and Sean Hocking of House of Butter for mentioning me on their blogs. I really appreciate it! These are fantastic blogs, so be sure to add them to your aggregator.

Another CRS Site...and More

Two quick lunch notes:

Thanks to Becky Green for adding AbsTracked to LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/)! It's listed under the name abstracked.

I just noticed that Diane Murley of Law Dawg Blawg (http://lawdawglib.blogspot.com/) added a research tip on Saturday for CRS reports. She pointed out this site http://www.law.siu.edu/lawlib/uslaw/crs.htm for more links to CRS reports. It includes the link I mentioned this morning as well as a link to LLSDC and several others. There are still more out there, but this is a pretty nice list, so be sure to check it out.

Update June 23, 2005: A new site for finding CRS reports can be found at http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/

How to Set Up a Blog Feed Aggregator

After sending out a notice regarding this blog to the LLSDC ListServ, I received some responses from people interested in setting up a blog aggregator. I decided to post a quick "How To" here. Hopefully, this will be a nice little reference point to send people to in the future. I'm going to give instructions on how to do this via Bloglines (only because that is what I use, so that's the easiest, fastest reference). Of course, you could do this any number of places or buy software, etc. This is just a way to get someone started. So, here's how:

1. Go to http://www.bloglines.com/ and click on "register." You will go to a form page. Simply fill out the form (e-mail address, create a password, etc.). Be sure to set the correct time for your location.

2. After you have filled out the form, click on the "register" button at the bottom.

3. Now, check your e-mail. You will find a validation e-mail message from Bloglines. Click on the link to validate your registration.

4. When you go to http://www.bloglines.com/, you will be prompted to enter your e-mail address and password. When you do this, you will see a split screen. There are tabs on the left.

5. Click on the "My Feeds" tab. This is where you will add the blogs you wish to read.

6. Under "My Feeds," click on "Add." On the right side of the screen you will now see a box that says "Blog or Feed URL." That is where you will add the feed URL for any blog you are interested in reading. If you are interested in reading this blog, enter www.abstracked.blogspot.com/atom.xml or http://feeds.feedburner.com/abstracked. Different feeds work better with different aggregators. You can find the RSS, XML, Atom, SubBloglines, etc. feed URL by clicking on the (usually bright orange) button or link on the blog page.

7. Once you have entered the URL you want, click on subscribe. You will see the name of the blog listed on the left. It will be highlighted. If you click on it, you will be able to read the text on the right-hand side of the screen. Each time the blogger updates the blog, it will appear highlighted and you can click on it to read the new post.

You can find more blogs by searching Bloglines, Feedster (http://www.feedster.com/), QuackTrack (http://quacktrack.com/) or any number of other places on the Web. After adding a few blogs to your aggregator, Bloglines will start giving you recommendations of blogs that are similar in nature to those you already have in your blogroll. There is a lot more to discuss, but figuring out the rest will be the fun part for you.

US Congressional Links

For my inaugural submission, I decided to use a congressional theme. So, for starters, why not get to know who has served in Congress over the past centuries? Here is the place to go for official congressional biographies. The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress spans 1774-present.

Next, for great US Senate reference materials, check out what the US Senate Library has done. They have set up a very useful Virtual Reference Desk where you will find statistics, anecdotes, historical backgrounds, CRS reports (see below) and so much more you won't come back for days!

CRS (Congressional Research Service) creates wonderful analytical reports on a vast array of topics that come up before Congress. These reports can be difficult to track down (unless you want to pay for them from Penny Hill Press). While I have about 2 dozen links for finding CRS reports, the most likely to be helpful (the most general) is this one. Basically, it's a pre-defined Google search. If you go to Penny Hill first and get some details, it works especially well.

To keep informed about what is being broadcast by C-SPAN on a daily basis, you can sign up for e-mail alerts. You can get alerts for C-SPAN1-3, C-SPAN Radio, Washington Journal, BookTV and Capitol Insight by going here and clicking on subscribe. You'll get a very colorful e-mail if you choose the HTML version and it includes nice links directly to the programs.
For free (you do have to agree to receive promotional materials -- no more than 2/month) mid-day e-mail alerts from Congressional Quarterly (CQ) sign up here.

It wouldn't be fair to start a blog without referencing another. So, here's the blog link of the day: beSpacific. I think it is the first blog I added to my aggregator and I would really be at a loss without it!