Library Blog Buzz

Resourceshelf blog is always good at finding the best new reference resources for librarians. The first resource the blog discovered is called Open Jurist, a database with free court opinions from United States Supreme Court and United States Courts of Appeals from the First, Second and Third series of The Federal Reports.

Our collection includes opinions from the:

United States Supreme Court - beginning in 1754 when it was known as the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania; and
Federal Appellate Courts - beginning in 1880

We currently have a total of approximately 647,000 opinions.

I will take anything "law" and "free" because not too many times I get the chance to review free legal sources. Details about Jurist are available at Resourceshelf.

The second gem found by the blog is the open source Global Terrorism Database containing info on terrorist activities worldwide from 1970 through 2004.

For each GTD incident, information is available on the date and location of the incident, the weapons used and nature of the target, the number of casualties, and -- when identifiable -- the identity of the perpetrator.

The Global Terrorism Database is the most comprehensive database on terrorist events in the world with information on over 80,000 terrorist attacks and data collection "supervised by an advisory panel of 12 terrorism research experts". Read more at Resourceshelf blog.