International Legal Research
Web Searching and
Tools for Using the
Web More Effectively
Evaluating Web Sites
• who authored/published?
• objectivity
• currency
• coverage
• ease of use
• beware of bogus sites!
"Who is" tools
Use
www.domaintools.com
or
http://www.whois.org/
to find out "who is"
behind a web site
http://zapatopi.net/
uga
Types of Site Providers
•
•
•
•
•
•
government (including IGOs)
sellers
individuals (experts, scholars)
interest groups (including NGOs)
professional associations
libraries and universities
Search Engines
• Google < < current front runner
• Yahoo
• Clusty
• MSN
• AltaVista
• Alltheweb
• LawCrawler
Use searchenginewatch.com
to keep up with the latest
developments in web
searching
More on Search Engines
• they don’t search the web
– indexes
– created by crawlers
– fraction of total pages
– don’t index everything on a page
What if you don’t find anything?
• use search engine tools to broaden
search
• use a different search engine
• identify databases or other sources of
non-static pages
Google “Advanced Search Tips” Page
kosovo nato
.int
Note: the .int domain is used only
for registering organizations
established by international
treaties
OR site:.org
Searching for German perspective on EU database
directive’s “safe harbour” provisions…in english
database
safe harbour
EU European Union
.de
http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/
Personalizing your Google Searching
google web history
Alerts
mexico president election
Sample email msg from Google Alert
Google Scholar
peer-reviewed papers
• theses
• books
• preprints
• abstracts
• technical reports
Google Scholar
Daniel Bodansky
Search results in Google Scholar
and
protection environment
international law
""
war armed
or
Turkey
European Union
http://www.boeckler.de/cps/rde/xchg/SID-3D0
Also on the Google Language Tools page
http://world.altavista.com
A rolling stone gathers no
moss.
http:/del.icio.us: social bookmarking
Blogs, RSS Feeds, Wikis
Great blog for
tracking new
developments
in int’l law
Feeds and Aggregators
Feeds: “feed” new entries for news or blogs to the web
• ATOM
•RSS: Really Simple Syndication
Aggregators: collect feeds: more manageable!
•Google Reader
• Bloglines
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU&feature=user
Wikis
• free
• web based
• collaborative pages
• as easy as word processing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY&feature=user
Subjectspecific
database
How do you
find these
kinds of
databases?
•Use your fabulous web searching skills
•Use a good research guide on the subject
From
ASIL
guide to
Human
rights
resources
Old Web Sites
• Google cache
• Wayback Machine
Wayback Machine
http://www.archive.org/index.php
www.facebook.com
April ‘05
August ‘05
January 18, 2001
Feb 2, 2001
Long Live the Internet
• social networking
• iTunes
• smartphone apps
• Skype
• NetFlix streaming