C&RL News November 2019 588 Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public services and collection development at Willamette University, email: jroberts@willamette.edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian for technical ser vices at Willamette University, email: cdrost@ willamette.edu I n t e r n e t R e v i e w sJoni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost LegiScan: Bringing People to the Process. Access: https://legiscan.com. LegiScan is a real-time legislative tracking site for state and federal legislation in the United States. The free component of the site allows users to view and monitor changes to legislation in a single state and the U.S. Congress, as well as create basic reports on monitored activity. Paid subscriptions al- low monitoring of multiple states and have expanded reporting options. The site covers 2010 to the present, and bills selected for monitoring prior to the current legislative session are automatically pushed to an archived set of monitored bills. Searches can be limited to a specific legisla- tive year or all content. A major strength of the site is the ability to see at a glance the status, summary, and last activity of a bill in both the brief search results and the user- defined list of monitored bills. There is also a group discussion function, where multiple users can collectively monitor and comment on legislation. Users can create and control access to these groups. The site appears most useful to policy analysts and researchers concerned with contemporary issues in U.S. politics. De- pending on the scope of their activities, it may provide a free or lower-cost option to current legislation-tracking resources. There is also some utility for undergraduates learn- ing in detail about the U.S. legislative process at the state and federal levels. Users may find it easier to digest legislative information from LegiScan rather than relying on existing gov- ernment sites. The discussion function could also be useful for short-term group projects on legislative activities, though it does create an additional social media feed for students to track. The benefit would be an aggregated feed focused on the project that does not produce persistent connections beyond the project that students would need to manage. Once familiar with the site, politically active students may also find it useful outside the classroom for tracking legislative activity in their area of concern. LegiScan would be useful to undergradu- ate and graduate students, U.S. politics schol- ars, social and economic policy researchers, and professional disciplines impacted by state and federal policy shifts.—Kevin Jones, Linfield College, kjones3@linfield.edu Pu b l i c Acce s s to Co u r t E l e c t ro n i c R e - cords. Access: https://www.pacer.gov/. Most of the daily transactions of our lives now move at the digital speed of the Internet, these daily transactions include legal docu- ments. Once the domain of law firms or law school students, legal documents are now available to the general public. For research- ers, such as attorneys, commercial businesses, and the general public, who require access to the federal judiciary cases, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) website contains all U.S. federal court records. According to its website, PACER is an “electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information online from federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts, and the PACER Case Lo- cator.” The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts manages this useful site. Anyone can register for a PACER online account for free, and users can access cases for a nominal fee. Researchers begin by logging in to their account and then navigating to “Find A Case” at the top of the page. Users are then directed to the “PACER Case Locator,” the national mailto:jroberts%40willamette.edu?subject= mailto:cdrost%40willamette.edu?subject= mailto:cdrost%40willamette.edu?subject= https://legiscan.com mailto:kjones3%40linfield.edu?subject= https://www.pacer.gov/ November 2019 589 C&RL News index for district, bankruptcy, and appel- late courts. Researchers can also search for cases by individual court websites, which includes the U.S. Supreme Court, and all U.S. Appellate Courts, U.S. District Courts, and United States Bankruptcy Courts. Court cases are added every evening to the “PACER Case Locator.” A unique feature to the website is the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF), which allows courts to accept legal filings and allows access to filed documents via the Internet. Digital audio recordings, used in many judicial bankruptcy proceedings, are also available at a nominal fee. The PACER website offers a good example of what the Internet does best—providing a vast body of data and information to the gen- eral public that is easily searched and avail- able at an affordable cost. Legal researchers have a comprehensive portal through which they can efficiently search for U.S. court cases. This website is highly recommended.—Larry Cooperman, University of Central Florida Libraries, lawrence.cooperman@ucf.edu The USC Shoah Foundation: The Institute for Visual History and Education. Access: https://sfi.usc.edu/. The USC Shoah Foundation, housed at the University of Southern California (USC), was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994. Spielberg created the foundation after his encounters with Holocaust survivors while filming the movie Schindler’s List. The site is easily accessible. The homep- age provides access through a navigation bar to various sections, including the “Visual His- tory Archive,” “Center for Advanced Geno- cide Research,” “Education Programs,” and the “Stronger Than Hate” program. “Latest News” and “Upcoming Events” are additional resources found on the homepage. The “Visual History Archive” is the crown jewel of the foundation. It allows subscrib- ing users to investigate the digital collection and view more than 55,000 audiovisual testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocides and massacres throughout the world. Sixty-five countries and 43 languages are represented in the testimonies, including the Rwandan Tutsi and Armenian genocides, the Nanjing massacre, and the Jewish Holo- caust. Users have a manual and FAQ section to assist them in searching, and indexing provides the ability to search by geographi- cal locations, time periods, and experience groups. Full or partial access to the “Visual History Archive” is available to subscribing institutions. A “Visual History Archive On- line” was created “to accommodate incred- ible demand from outside the subscribing institutions,” allowing access to more than 3,000 testimonies with free registration. The “Center for Advanced Genocide Re- search” is a “major interdisciplinary hub for Holocaust and genocide studies worldwide.” The Center, founded in 2014, offers fellow- ships and hosts scholars while also working to advance research on the Holocaust and genocide. “Education Programs” provides resources including IWitness which contains more than 1,500 testimonies, activities, and re- sources (free registration required), as well as teacher resources such as lessons, online exhibits, documentaries, and professional development opportunities. “Stronger Than Hate” is a program moti- vated by events of the 2017 rally in Charlot- tesville, Virginia. It was created to recognize and refute different forms of hatred, includ- ing racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism. Sections for educators (primary through high school), university students, and the com- munity provide resources for each group. The mission of the foundation is to “de- velop empathy, understanding, and respect through testimony.” The USC Shoah Founda- tion is well on its way to fulfilling its mission of informing future generations about the destruction that hatred can cause.—Karen Evans, Indiana State University, karen. evans@indstate.edu mailto:lawrence.cooperman%40ucf.edu?subject= https://sfi.usc.edu/ mailto:karen.evans%40indstate.edu?subject= mailto:karen.evans%40indstate.edu?subject=