InSITE

A Current Awareness Service of Cornell Law Library

Presentation for the Starr Foundation Workshop

by

Jean M. Pajerek

October 9, 2007

Cornell Law Library

Facts about InSITE

Began as weekly publication in February 1996; now published every two weeks

Available via five channels of distribution: Searchable online database and archives Email subscription RSS feed Law Librarian Blog Paper version for local readers

InSITE’s email subscribers are primarily from the U.S, but 18 other countries are represented as well. U.S. subscribers are from academic, firm, and government law libraries.

This is what InSITE looks like when viewed as an RSS feed.

This is the public view of InSITE, displaying the current issue and the archive of past issues.

The database is searchable by a number of different parameters.

Each InSITE record contains basic metadata, not all of which is visible to public users.

Title of the site being annotated The source or sponsoring body of the site The URL Date the annotation was written Status of the site: active, inactive, or updated Topics and keywords for subject access The volume and issue number in which the

annotation appears The author of the annotation The text of the annotation itself is also searchable

The entire collection of annotations is also browseable.

InSITE’s administrative interface requires a password-protected login

This is the search screen within the administrative interface. Note the functions listed along the left-hand side of the screen.

The administrative interface allows the annotators to access both published and unpublished annotations. This is an example of an unpublished annotation; it cannot be viewed by the public.

Note that this is an

“unpublished” annotation.

In-process records have the word “proposed” in the “Author” field.

By searching on the word “proposed” in the “Author” field, annotators are able to see the all the sites available for annotating.

This is an alphabeticallist of the sites availablefor annotating.

In addition to writing the annotation, the annotator also assigns topic(s) and/or keyword(s) for subject access.

This is a list of controlledvocabulary terms

These are free-text keywords

Once the annotator has finished writing the annotation and assigning the subject term(s), he or she clicks on the “Update Record” button to save the changes.

Clicking on the “Make Current Issue” button displays a form for entering information about the issue.

“Make Current Issue” button

Creating a new issue of InSITE

The editor assigns a volume and issue number to each of the of five annotations selected for publication.

The date of publication is entered into the form, as well as the names of those who wrote the annotations.

Clicking on the “Switch” button switches the record from “unpublished” to “published.”

The “Switch” button

The annotation is now “published” and visible to the public

Thank you for your attention.

Jean M. Pajerek

Head of Technical Services and Information ManagementCornell Law Library

jmp8@cornell.edu