Free Public Access to Federal Materials on Guide to Law Online by Donna Sokol.
From the post:
Through an agreement with the Library of Congress, the publisher William S. Hein & Co., Inc. has generously allowed the Law Library of Congress to offer free online access to historical U.S. legal materials from HeinOnline. These titles are available through the Library’s web portal, Guide to Law Online: U.S. Federal, and include:
- United States Code 1925-1988 (includes content up to 1993)
- From Guide to Law Online: United States Law
- United States Reports v. 1-542 (1754-2004)
- From Guide to Law Online: United States Judiciary
- Code of Federal Regulations (1938-1995)
- From Guide to Law Online: Executive
- Federal Register v. 1-58 (1936-1993)
- From Guide to Law Online: Executive
I should be happy but then I read:
These collections are browseable. For example, to locate the 1982 version of the Bankruptcy code in Title 11 of the U.S. Code you could select the year (1982) and then Title number (11) to retrieve the material. (emphasis added)
Err, actually it should say: These collections are browseable only. No search within or across the collections.
Here is an example:
If you expand volume 542 you will see:
Look! There is Intell vs. ADM, let’s look at that one!
Did I just overlook a search box?
I checked the others and you can to.
I did find one that was small enough (less than 20 pages I suppose) to have a search function:
So, let’s search for something that ought to be in the CFR general provisions, like “department:”
The result?
Actually that is an abbreviation of the error message. Waste of space to show more.
To summarize, the Library of Congress has arranged for all of us to have browseable access but no search to:
- United States Code 1925-1988 (includes content up to 1993)
- From Guide to Law Online: United States Law
- United States Reports v. 1-542 (1754-2004)
- From Guide to Law Online: United States Judiciary
- Code of Federal Regulations (1938-1995)
- From Guide to Law Online: Executive
- Federal Register v. 1-58 (1936-1993)
- From Guide to Law Online: Executive
Hundreds of thousands of pages of some of the most complex documents in history and no searching.
If that’s helping us, I don’t think we can afford much more help from the Library of Congress. That’s a hard thing for me to say because in the vast number of cases I really like and support the Library of Congress (aside from the robber baron refugees holed up on the Copyright Office).
Just so I don’t end on a negative note, I have a suggestion to correct this situation:
Give Thompson-Reuters (I knew them as West Publishing Company) or LexisNexis a call. Either one is capable of a better solution than you have with William S. Hein & Co., Inc. Either one has “related” products it could tastefully suggest along with search results.