ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ O ctober 1998 / 709 I n t e r n e t R e v i e w s Sara Amato, editor Justice Inform ation Center. Access: http://w w w .ncjrs.org/ W h ile com p la in ts a b ou t junk o n the Internet grow daily, on e W eb publisher co n ­ sistently provides worthwhile content: the U.S. Federal Government. The Justice Information Center (JIC) is a fine exam ple o f h o w federal agencies can collaborate to provide quality information in an easy-to-use format. Main­ tained b y the National Criminal Justice Refer­ ence Service (NCJRS), JIC is a collection o f clearinghouses from the major federal g o v ­ ernment agencies dealing with criminal jus­ tice information, such as the National Insti­ tute o f Justice, O ffice o f Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Bureau o f Justice Sta­ tistics, O ffice for Victims o f Crime, and Office o f National Drug Control Policy. The JIC features a number o f options for those in search o f criminal justice informa­ tion. “N ew this W eek” and “Current High­ lights” sections draw attention to newly re­ leased reports, news releases, and grant o p ­ portunities. These sections are g o o d starting points for tracking d ow n reports recently dis­ cussed in the popular press. Another search option is to brow se for information based on the following topics: corrections, courts, crime prevention, criminal justice statistics, drugs and crime, international, juvenile justice, law enforcement, research and evaluation, and victims. Some topics are further subdivided. Each topic or subtopic is generally broken into three categories: full-text documents, Web sites, and listservs. Within each category, an extensive alphabetical list o f links is provided. Though the full text docum ent lists seem to be prima­ rily governm ent-produced reports, the Web site lists include public interest and profes­ sional organizations. Unfortunately, aside from titles, there is little other descriptive informa­ tion about each link, and in som e cases, in­ decipherable acronyms are used. Also, there is no information provided about the update cycle, al­ though most lists do appear to have current infor­ mation. JIC also offers tw o search engines. The first, available under the “Keyw ord Search” button, uses Excite software to search the 1,200 full text docum ents available o n the NCJRS server. O f note is the help screen, w hich not only provides instruction in c o n ­ structing searches, but also explicitly states what is being searched so the user knows that PDF files are not included. The site also provides access to the NCJRS Abstracts Data­ base, a collection o f summaries o f m ore than 140,000 publications o n criminal justice, in­ cluding governm ent reports, books, research reports, journal articles, and unpublished re­ search back to the mid 1970s. Search options include author, subject, docum ent number, and a global search— w hich searches the ab­ stract text. Results include bibliographic in­ formation and abstract, but n o links to the online versions o f the publications are d e ­ scribed. Users are instructed to order docu ­ ments from NCJRS, or are referred to the main JIC W eb site for docum ents published by sponsoring agencies after 1995. A suggested improvement w ou ld b e to provide links to docum ents directly from the database, or to at least provide m ore detailed instructions on locating specific docum ents o n the JIC Web site. Despite som e minor criticisms, the JIC is clearly an essential tool for locating criminal justice information o n the Web and beyond. —Arlene Weible, Willamette University; aweible@willamette.edu Center for Responsive Politics. Access: h ttp ://w w w .crp .org/ A hot topic in politics these days is the amount and source o f funds in elections and political actions. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), w hich describes itself as a “non-partisan, non-profit research g rou p,” provides a wealth o f information on campaign Sara A m a to is a u to m a te d systems lib r a ria n a t C e n tra l W ashington University;sam ato@ tahom a.cwu.edu http://www.ncjrs.org/ mailto:aweible@willamette.edu http://www.crp.org/ mailto:samato@tahoma.cwu.edu 710 / C&RL News ■ O ctober 1998 finance and re­ lated topics on their Web site. F u n d in g fo r th e c e n te r com es from a v a rie ty o f f o u n d a t i o n s and trusts, in­ c lu d in g the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. This site will b e beneficial to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students and in­ structors in a variety o f disciplines, such as political science, government, journalism, and law. CRP’s mission is to get citizens more in­ volved in government and to encourage Con­ gress to be more responsive. Topics intro­ duced o n the hom epage include politicians, political action committees (PACs), individual donors, political parties, and the law and its regulations. While the focus o f the site is on politics at the federal level, there is a state directory with links to each state’s agen­ cies related to campaign finance issues. All o f the databases on the CRP site are well-organized and easy to use. Users will find that the pages for each database provide many search options. For example, the Con­ gressional Travel Database allows for search­ ing by lawmaker, by sponsor, or by destina­ tion. A particularly noteworthy section o f the site is the “Registered Federal Lobbyist Data­ base.” Based on information from the House and Senate, this site provides searching by com pany name, client name or lobbyist name within data filed b y those w h o lob b y at the federal level. Other databases o f interest in­ clude the 1998 Congressional Candidate Pro­ files database, the PAC Database, Incumbent Campaign Finance Profiles, and the 1996 White House Coffee and Sleepover Database. To keep up with the latest campaign-finance issues, users can sign up to receive Monday Morning Alerts, which cover special-interest leg­ islation in Washington. These alerts are e-mailed w eekly at n o charge. With a lot o f data to maintain, the CRP staff does an impressive job o f providing re­ ports o f interest to the general public. This site w ou ld benefit anyone wanting to know w h o provides and receives the financing for participating in U.S. politics.— Doralyn H. Edwards, Rice University; doralyn@rice.edu A G R IC O LA . Access: http://w w w .nal.usda. gov/ag98/ag98. html The National Agriculture Library (NAL) has provided a significant public resource for ag­ ricultural information by developing public access AGRICOLA, a W eb-accessible version o f the NAL database describing books, jour­ nal articles, and materials in a range o f other formats. W eb-accessible AGRICOLA is bro­ ken into tw o segments. The Online Public A ccess Catalog covers b ook s, audiovisual materials, and serial holdings from the library’s very com prehensive agriculture collections. The Journal Article Citation Index is not a citation index in the usual sense but rather a database o f citations to journal articles, books chapters, and similar materials. Each segment can be searched by brow sing a list o f terms, by keyw ord or field-limited searching, or by using a quasi, com m and-based advanced mode. The interface has a stripped dow n to basics look and the help offered is succinct, although somewhat superficial. The advanced m ode in particular could use further explana­ tion. Also, the basic keyword search (which is really a fielded search) only supports the com ­ bination o f two search terms. The advanced search supports a maximum o f six terms. De­ spite these limitations, the rather basic func­ tionality is effective and many users may find it more than adequate for their needs. AGRICOLA is a significant com pilation o f the agricultural literature, particularly that o f North America. As such it is o f interest to a w ide range o f potential users from farmers to policym a k ers. NAL’s W eb -b a sed version makes this tool available to a much wider range o f citizens than have had access in the past. While commercial systems may offer more effective or more efficient retrieval, the W eb-based NAL form o f AGRICOLA is fairly easy to use and is an effective way for casual users or serious researchers to identify pu b­ lished sources o f agricultural information.— Karla L. Hahn, University o f Maryland Librar­ ies; kh86@umail.umd.edu. ■ mailto:doralyn@rice.edu http://www.nal.usda mailto:kh86@umail.umd.edu