Officially launched in November 2002, the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) is a "free, independent and non-profit global legal research facility" affiliated with several academic legal information institutes, among them Cornell's Legal Information Institute and others from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, South Africa, Britain and Ireland, and the University of the South Pacific School of Law. WorldLII provides a single search facility for over 270 databases from 48 jurisdictions in 20 countries.
The user may select a resource area, among which are: legislation, case law, superior or high court decisions, journals, treaties, law reform, domain name decisions, and secondary materials.
Alternatively, a jurisdiction or geographic region may be selected, with an emphasis on Pacific and Commonwealth countries (for the United States only Supreme Court decisions are included).
Among recent additions to the website are World Trade Organization Panel Decisions from the last few years to present, New Zealand Privacy Commissioner Cases 1996 to present, and materials from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (CanLII).
And then we noted, at the end of this description, a hat tip to ResourceShelf contributing editor Stuart Basefsky of Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Martin P. Catherwood Library. Which sealed the deal for us. Stuart routinely brings to our attention quality resources that we otherwise might never have seen.
World LII currently provides access to "891 databases from 123 countries and territories via the Free Access to Law Movement," which comprises legal information institutes from all over the world, including the venerable Legal Information Institute at Cornell University School of Law -- online since 1992.
The collection of databases is basically one-stop shopping for everything available via its University-based LII members:
Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII)
British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII)
Contentwise, these databases include case law, legislation, treaties, legal reform, law journals, and subject-specific information. These are organized geographically, by continent and then by country. Almost everything is in the English language, unless otherwise noted. A powerful federated search tool allows you to choose which databases to search. A dropdown menu provides Boolean options; additional options include sorting by relevance, word counts, and number of results displayed at one time. Extensive help is available.
You can also browse the offerings here by subject category -- from Accounting & Auditing to Women & the Law. Clicking the Other Indexes link at the top of this page displays a list of law-oriented subject indexes available via other websites. (Scroll down below the main subject index.)
The World LII Catalog "provides links to over 15,000 law-related web sites in every country in the world. WorldLII's Websearch makes searchable the full text of as many of these sites as WorldLII's web-spider can reach." Or browse by country. A Recent Additions page links you to the newest resources.
The Law Journals Project aims to provide a comprehensive search facility for all academic law journals available via WorldLII and other Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) and the nearly 20,000 law journal articles and academic papers available through the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN). Currently, the search facility below allows searches over 45 law journals databases.
(GLIN)
GLIN is a public database of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and other complementary legal sources contributed by governmental agencies and international organizations. These GLIN members contribute the official full texts of published documents to the database in their original language. Each document is accompanied by a summary in English and subject terms selected from the multilingual index to GLIN. All summaries are available to the public, and public access to full texts is also available in participating jurisdictions.
The International Courts and Tribunals Project (ICT Project) aims to provide a comprehensive search facility for final decisions of all international and multi-national courts and tribunals, whether global or regional. The search facility below allows searches over the decisions of 20 International Courts and Tribunals, comprising over 20,000 decisions. Most databases contain complete backsets and are updated regularly. A few are still being completed.
This project aims to make searchable from one location all of the databases specialising in Law Reform available on any of the Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) that are part of WorldLII. The databases currently included are listed below. Individual databases may be searched on their respective host LIIs.
This project aims to make searchable from one location all of the databases specialising in Privacy law available on any of the Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) that are part of WorldLII. The databases currently included are listed above. Individual databases may be searched on their respective host LIIs.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
