Whether you are a law librarian, lawyer, law student, or just someone who works with legal information, the iBraryGuy has a hot tip to make your work just a little bit easier. Actually, the Jureeka! plugin was a hot tip that came to us and with just a little bit of investigation, we found ourselves impressed!
Jureeka!, true to its name, is real revelation! A plugin / extension for the Firefox and Google Chrome browsers, it is designed to turn the legal citations on the pages you view into actual links to the cases, statutes, and other primary sources themselves. It does so simply, seamlessly, and rather powerfully. We should also mention that it couldn't be much easier to use. You install it and let it run in the background. There is an optional toolbar that you can use within your browser to look up cases and items by citation (doig so returns a hyperlink to the material), covert PDFs to html documents with citation links, report bugs, and even tag legal information. You do not need the toolbar, however, to have Jureeka! turn the citations on web pages into links. The added functionality is up to you.
So where does Jureeka! get its cases and materials and just how good is the coverage? Well, according to the creator's blog, it links out to materials hosted by public sources such as Precydent, Public Library of Law, Justia, and others. It essentially searches the web for cases and materials, saving you the time and trouble. As for coverage, it is fairly impressive, providing links for US federal and state materials, international law, specific US law reviews, and even materials unique to the UK and Australia. You can find detailed information on dates of coverage and sources here.
Jureeka! was created and is maintained by Michael Poulshock, a public interest lawyer located in Pennington, NJ. It is currently only available for Firefox and Google Chrome, but is essentially available for free . . . though donations to help Mr. Poulshock maintain Jureeka! are welcome.
Tag: law
THOMAS turns 15 in style! New features unveiled.
Happy birthday, THOMAS! The premier site for free, U.S. legislative information turns 15 today and it’s better than ever! The Library of Congress is celebrating THOMAS’ birthday in a fashion that is seldom seen today . . . they are giving away birthday presents in the form of greater functionality and new features. A happy birthday indeed!
Anyone who does federal legislative research in the USA will tell you that THOMAS (named for Thomas Jefferson) has long been an indispensible resource. Not only has it been free and easy to use . . . but comprehensive and feature-rich as well. Covering the 93rd Congress (1973) on, THOMAS provides bills and resolutions in full, searchable text. Additionally, users can find the Congressional Record back to 101st Congress, committee reports back to the 104th Congress, presidential nominations back to the 100th Congress, and a sweet collection of treaty materials all the way back to the 90th Congress. Sprinkle in some additional government resources links and you can see why THOMAS has been so valuable for 15 years!
In honor of the 15th birthday of this amazing tool, the Library of Congress has been seeking user feedback for a slew of new improvements and features. These candles on the cake were unveiled today with some much-deserved fanfare. If you haven’t checked them out, join in the birthday celebration and do so. There is a new bookmarking and sharing toolbar for you social networking fans, a rundown of the top five bills of the week, a wonderful new RSS feed (that iBraryGuy will be adding to Librarians.Collected and LibraryVibes), and a cool tip of the week section. They say that some things get better with age . . . clearly THOMAS is one of them!
Check out the newly enhanced THOMAS today! Heck, have a slice of birthday cake while your at it!