Use of an expanding directory interface for WWW legal resources

Abstract

The Internet contains many legal resources which supplement more established online sources, but effective resource discovery tools are critical for end users [10]. The Directory of Internet-Accessible Legal Resources (DIALeR), http://legalsearch.ils.unc.edu/, was developed to aid in rapid discovery and navigation between high-quality legal sites. The resources in the DIALeR (MS SQL) database were selected by law librarians with an eye towards finding reputable WWW sites that are building significant repositories of public domain documents. The back-end DIALeR interface enables these librarians to easily build, modify, and customize a tree structure of legal topics. The current interface includes portions of the tree that closely follow long-established print indices of the law. For the user, the DIALeR design facilitates the location of document archives, databases, and other topically focused WWW sites via nagivation through a client interface to the underlying database of resources. Constructed from custom COM component software and Active Server Page (ASP) scripts, the DIALeR client interface mimics the wellknown Explorer tool for navigating the file system in MS Windows. Menu items showing a plus-sign (+) can be expanded into sub-items; those with a minus-sign (-) can be contracted; and final items (annotated hyperlinks leading to relevant WWW sites) appear in a separate right-hand frame. While DIALeR's human selection and indexing of resources aids first-order resource discovery, finer-grain searching is achieved through local search tools available at individual sites, e.g., full-text search engines are commonly found at text-rich legal sites.