The Law Librarian Blog (Joe Hodnicki) recently posted about the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse:

The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse is a web repository of information and documents relating to civil rights cases, particularly injunctive and class-action cases.  Sponsored by The Center for Empirical Research in the Law at the Washington University School of Law, St Louis, the database has grown substantially since LLB’s 2006 post.

Currently, the categories include: Child Welfare, Criminal Justice (Other), Disability Rights-Pub. Accom., Education, Election/Voting Rights, Equal Employment, Fair Housing/Lending/Insurance, Immigration, Jail Conditions, Juvenile Institution, Mental Health Facility, Mental Retardation Facility, Nursing Home Conditions, Policing, Prison Conditions, Public Accommodations, Public Benefits, Public Defenders, Public Housing, School Desegregation, Speech and Religious Freedom.

For each included case, litigation documents include the docket sheet, the complaint, any decrees issued by courts or agreed to by parties, and any published opinions. Cases are indexed by court and issue, and are summarized. Check out the Clearinghouse search engine. Well done!

The Civil Rights Digital Library from the University of Georgia:

The Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative represents one of the most ambitious and comprehensive efforts to date to deliver educational content on the Civil Rights Movement via the Web. The struggle for racial equality in the 1950s and 1960s is among the most far-reaching social movements in the nation’s history, and it represents a crucial step in the evolution of American democracy. The initiative promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement trough its three principal components: 1) a digital video archive of historical news film allowing learners to be nearly eyewitnesses to key events of the Civil Rights Movement, 2) a civil rights portal providing a seamless virtual library on the Movement by connecting related digital collections on a national scale, and 3) a learning objects component delivering secondary Web-based resources – such as contextual stories, encyclopedia articles, lesson plans, and activities–to facilitate the use of the video content in the learning process. The CRDL advances cross-disciplinary approaches, promoting a seamless infrastructure for learning, emphasizing context and structure for digital information, and recruiting and educating new leaders for a learning society. The Civil Rights Digital Library initiative achieves its desired outcomes through a partnership among digital library and information technology professionals, archivists, humanities scholars, educators, university graduate and undergraduate researchers, academic publishers, and public broadcasters.

Google Scholar is indexing the Law Journals in HeinOnline to make the more than 1,100 titles searchable in the Google Scholar interface. The indexing is still ongoing, as Google Scholar has not fully indexed all of the titles in the Law Journal Collection as of yet. Over the next 30 days or so they should near completion of the indexing at which point the entire HeinOnline Law Journal collection will be searchable in Google Scholar.

So how does it work? Go to Google Scholar and search for a Law Journal or an article name from within a Law Journal. If the article is available in HeinOnline, it will be included in your search results, like the example below.

When you click on the link to open the article in Google Scholar, you will see the HeinOnline logo on the right sidebar with a link that says "Subscribers Click Here To Access". When you click on the access link, you will be taken directly to that article in HeinOnline. NOTE: You may be asked to log in once you reach the HeinOnline site. If so, simply log in and then you’ll be directed to the article.

(from HeinOnline Weblog)

Billed as "the world’s largest free law library," the Public Library of Law offers free online access to cases from the U.S. Supreme Court (from 1892 forward) and Courts of Appeals (generally from 1950 forward), all 50 states back to 1997, federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states, regulations, court rules, constitutions, and more.

West has recently released a new tool that is sure to enhance legal research using the West Key Number System.  Here is an excerpt of an announcement from West:

The Search for Key Numbers tool, released November 10, 2007, offers a lightning-fast solution: Type a short description of your issue and click Search. Key numbers—each with a link to a jurisdiction-specific Custom Digest result—are provided for you.

Done.

This new feature instantly identifies the key numbers assigned to your legal issue and retrieves on-point cases via the Custom Digest. To access the new Search for Key Numbers tool, click Key Numbers at the top of any Westlaw page or on the site map. A page is displayed that contains the Search for Key Numbers text box, as well as links to the West Key Number Digest outline and to KeySearch®.

To use the Search for Key Numbers tool, type a description of your issue, e.g., landlord duty of care to trespassers, in the text box. To select a jurisdiction, click Change Jurisdiction and use the check boxes provided. (If you don’t select a jurisdiction, the default jurisdiction is your home state.) Using West’s exclusive CaRE® technology, the same technology behind the scenes of ResultsPlus®, the Search for Key Numbers tool displays key numbers potentially relevant to your issue. Click a key number, and you retrieve jurisdiction-specific headnotes classified under the key number.

There is no charge for using the Search for Key Numbers tool to identify key numbers. If you click a key number and retrieve headnotes via the Custom Digest, you are billed in the same manner as with any other Custom Digest search.

You can access more information about the Key Numbers Search Tool here.

Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced [on November 14, 2007] that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose. View the Press Release here.

The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce the release of its newly designed web site (http://www.loc.gov/law). The web site includes information on a range of legal issues and research topics as well as our services and logistics of using the Reading Room. In addition to established products such as the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), Guide to Law Online and the Global Legal Monitor, new Law Library products are available as well. Highlights include:

Congressional Hearings Project: Full-text access to selected historical Congressional committee hearings on a variety of topics.
http://www.loc.gov/law/find/hearings.html

Foreign and International Law Guides: Provides a starting point for researching foreign, international, and comparative law with analysis and references to official printed and online resources.
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/foreign.html

Pakistan: Crisis in the Judiciary
Find information and analysis of the suspension and subsequent reinstatement of the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/pakistan-justice.html

A quick and informative video about the quickest and most efficient way to read blogs and other websites, by using RSS feeds and subscribing to them in a web-based RSS reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines.…

Aiming to make federal case law fast and easy to search, more accessible to the public – and free – Columbia Law School and the  University of Colorado Law School have launched a Web site called
AltLaw.org. AltLaw.org contains nearly 170,000 decisions dating back to the early 1990s from the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Appellate courts.

A number of alternatives to Wikipedia have started to gain traction.  The Online Education Database reviews what it describes as the "Top 7 Alternatives to Wikipedia."