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Finding Law in the 21st Century: An Introduction to the SOSIG Law Gateway

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2019

Steven Whittle
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Extract

This paper provides an introduction to the SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway) Law Gateway a web based descriptive database of high quality legal information resources on the Internet (www.sosig.ac.uk/law). The Law Gateway is a new research support service being developed by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London) in partnership with the University of Bristol as part of the UK's Resource Discovery Network initiative. The project seeks to provide access to the expanding range of global legal materials now being delivered over the Internet. In effect, the Law Gateway aims to offer the UK and international legal communities appropriate new ways to find, assess and access law in the new century.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Legal Information , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , Summer 2001 , pp. 360 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the International Association of Law Libraries 

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References

1 NUA Internet Surveys provides an “educated guess” as to how many people are online. As of July 2000 the number is 359.8 million. http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html.Google Scholar

2 Annabel Colley addresses these issues in her “Guide to quality information research on the Internet” http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/know/quality_1.shtml.Google Scholar

3 Nick Homes and Delia Venables remark on this in their introduction to “Researching the Legal Web” (London: Butterworths 2nd ed. 1999) “now … firms of all sizes are not only looking at the web to find legal resources set up by others, but are actively investigating what use they can make of the web for marketing their services and for selling their services online” p. 9.Google Scholar

4 See Lawrence, S. and Giles, C.L. “Accessibility of information on the Web” Nature, Vol. 400, 8 July 1999, Pp. 107–9 (UK: Macmillan, 1999) for further details.Google Scholar

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6 SOSIG Social Science Information Gateway http://www.sosig.ac.uk.Google Scholar

7 See the DESIRE Information Gateways Handbook http://www.desire.org/handbook/ and Renardus project website http://www.renardus.org/.Google Scholar

8 ROADS Resource Organisation and Discovery in Subject Based Gateways http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/roads/.Google Scholar

9 Martin Belcher and Emma Place discuss the background to quality descriptive databases in ‘People power and the semantic web: building quality controlled portals’ www.desire.org/w9-poster.htm.Google Scholar

10 See also Diana Botluk “Evaluating the quality of web resources” LLRX Research Wire April 3, 2000 http://www.llrx.com/colums/quality.htm.Google Scholar

11 Miskin, Christine, A Legal Thesaurus (Hebden Bridge: Legal Information Resources, 3rd ed. 1997).Google Scholar

12 RDN Virtual Training Suite: Internet for Lawyers http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/lawyer/index.htm.Google Scholar

13 IALS Institute of Advanced Legal Studies http://ials.sas.ac.uk.Google Scholar

14 eagle-i (electronic access to global legal information) http://ials.sas.ac.uk/eagle-i.htm.Google Scholar

15 For further information on the use of SOSIG, see Monopoli, Maria and Nicholas, David “A user-centred approach to the evaluation of Subject Based Information Gateways: case study SOSIG” Aslib Proceedings, Vol.52, no. 6 June 2000 Pp. 218–231.Google Scholar

16 See Mackie, Morag and Burton, Paul F. “The use and effectiveness of the eLib subject gateways: a preliminary investigation” Program, Vol. 33, No. 4 October 1999 Pp. 327–337 for discussion on the need to promote the use of subject gateways.Google Scholar