oct04c.indd


I n t e r  n e t  R e v i e w s  
Joni R. Roberts and 

Carol A. Drost, 

Homicide in Chicago 1870-1830. Access: 
http://www.homicide.northwestern.edu. 
Home of the blues, Chicago has always 

been an articulate and tough town. 
Now, under the direction of Leigh B. 

Bienen, senior lecturer at Northwestern Uni­
versity School of Law, the Chicago Historical 
Homicide Project provides primary source 
access to “a rich log of 11,000 homicides 
maintained consistently and without interrup­
tion by the Chicago Police Department over 
the course of 60 years, from 1870­1930.” 

the Century,” including titles such as “Capone 
vs. McSwiggin,” “Death by Moonshine,” and 
the “Haymarket Affair.” With all the links to 
related documents, photographs, and hy­
pertext references, avid readers will become 
engrossed for hours in these cases that have 
shaped Chicago’s brutal history. 

A “Publications” link offers PDF access to 11 
primary and secondary resources useful to the 
study of Chicago criminology. And fi nally, click 
on “Interviews” to watch and listen to several 
law professors discuss at length various studies 

Funded by several grants, including one 
from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur 
Foundation, the research and development 
of this new Web site “was to make available 
to a wide audience, of teachers and students 
at the undergraduate and graduate level, to 
professionals and to amateurs, all of the cases 
and the rich contextual materials available on 
this period in Chicago.” Arranged chronologi­
cally, these contextual materials consist mainly 
of historical photographs, illustrations, and 
newspaper clippings. 

The most unique offering on this site is 
the “Interactive Database” that allows curios­
ity seekers and researchers alike the ability to 
search for an individual or a group of cases. 
Users may search the database by case num­
ber, date of offense, a variety of circumstances, 
a description of the victim and the defendant, 
their relationship, and the legal outcome of 
the case. The site also permits researchers to 
download the database in three formats: SPSS, 
Microsoft Access, and Excel. 

After trying out the “Interactive Database,” 
Homicide in Chicago visitors won’t want to 
miss some of the more famous “Crimes of 

Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian 
for public services and collection development at 
Willamette University, e-mail: jroberts@willamette. 
edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian 
for technical services at Willamette University, e-mail: 
cdrost@willamette.edu 

and cases, 
alongside 
a rare in­
terview of 

Clarence Darrow, circa 1932, staunchly ex­
pressing his views on the nature of criminal 
behavior. 

Homicide in Chicago 1870­1930 is an 
innovative and well­designed site that pro­
vides easy access to primary and secondary 
source documents that scholarly researchers 
and casual visitors would have diffi culty ac­
cessing otherwise. It is highly recommended 
for anybody interested in “an opportunity to 
study the rule of law, or its absence.”—James 
Smolens, Gloucester County Community Col­
lege, jsmolens@gccnj.edu 

Digital Libraries Initiative Phase 2. Access: 
http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/. 

Although it seems like light years ago, 
the Digital Libraries Initiative Phase 1 (DLI1) 
began just ten years ago. DLI1 featured a 
definition of digital libraries and a descrip­
tion of the initiative’s first six projects, which 
were all domestic. In contrast, DLI2 contains 
links to three dozen domestic and more than 
a dozen international partnerships. 

The level of sophistication of the projects 
has increased as they have proliferated. 
Early efforts were seminal and represent an 
important base for the concept of the digital 
library, but the newer projects (most gener­
ated in 1999 or 2000) represent an ongoing 
commitment to the storage and manipulation 
of large collections. They also exhibit a renewed 

550 / C&RL NewsOctober 2004 

http:http://www.dli2.nsf.gov
mailto:jsmolens@gccnj.edu
mailto:cdrost@willamette.edu
http:http://www.homicide.northwestern.edu


commitment to the searching, retrieval, and pro­
cessing of collections and to development in the 
areas of system architecture, metadata standards, 
component­based application architecture, and 
network services. 

The current projects span the disciplines 
and include ventures in the sciences and the 
humanities. The projects explore such areas as 
artificial intelligence, information retrieval, and 
distributed object computing. 

Although graphically cluttered, DLI2’s 
homepage offers numerous links and topics, 
such as “DLI2/Special Projects in the News,” 
“Highlights,” “Program Announcements,” and 
“Sponsor Agencies and Programs.” The verti­
cal navigation bar offers links to a rich array of 
information. 

Unfortunately, some of the links to funded 
projects, the raison d’etre for this site, are no 
longer viable domain names. It is possible that 
the DLI2 coordinators believe that the links to 
the projects’ Web sites will be kept current by 
those responsible for the various projects. Even 
if the sites are current, the broken links prevent 
easy access to them. 

One of the most interesting and potentially 
useful educational features of the site is an 
area on the homepage, “DLI2/Special Projects 
in the News.” 

The thumbnail illustrations of 15 of the projects 
are attractive and invite browsing through articles 
about these projects. Again, unfortunately, more 
than one of these links are dated and lead to 
inaccessible archived news features. 

This site, a treasure trove of information 
about groundbreaking projects, is rich in 
detail and includes abstracts, summaries, and 
contact information. Better attention to updat­
ing would add reliability to DLI2’s many other 
strengths. DLI2 would be of interest to any­
one wanting to know more about successful 
digital projects.—Shannon Van Kirk, Miami 
University, vankirk@lib.muohio.edu 

The Vietnam Project. Access: http://www. 
vietnam.ttu.edu/index.htm. 

The Vietnam Center of Texas Tech Uni­
versity was created in 1989 to encourage and 
educate users about the impact of the Vietnam 

Conflict upon U.S. history. The creators also 
hope to increase American understanding of 
Southeast Asian beliefs, values, and lifestyles. 
The Vietnam Project Web site is home to a num­
ber of primary sources, exhibits, and educational 
materials. It also includes information about 
publishing, conferences related to American 
involvement in Vietnam, and the history and 
current context of Southeast Asia. 

The Web site contains four main sections: 
“The Vietnam Center,” “The Virtual Vietnam 
Archive,” “The Oral History Project,” and “The 
Vietnam Archive.” 

Indochina Chronology, a quarterly pub­
lication that is no longer being published, is 
available in full text under the “Publications” 
section of “The Vietnam Center.” Issues include 
historical chronologies of events and conditions 
in Southeast Asia, as well as annotated bibliog­
raphies of publications (books, journal articles, 
official statements, etc.) on these subjects. Topics 
covered range from current events to history, 
culture, and economics. 

The archives areas of the Web site contain 
primary documents chronicling personal experi­
ences from the Vietnam Conflict, information and 
records of organizations of veterans, and other 
documents. A wide range of sources is indexed 
in a searchable database that links to the full 
text of articles from serials, journals, newsletters, 
and microforms. Resources include informa­
tion about air campaigns and the use of Agent 
Orange, records of operations, video and audio 
recordings, photographs, political cartoons, dia­
ries, letters, biographies of those who lost their 
lives in the conflict, slides, films, and more. 

“The Oral History Project” offers a wealth of 
firsthand accounts from participants in the wars 
of Southeast Asia. Transcripts of most of these 
interviews are available online in either print or 
audio format. This area also includes an online 
or downloadable workshop about the scope 
and methods of oral history practices. 

Those interested in peace studies, Asian 
studies, U.S. history or oral history, will fi nd 
the Vietnam Project a rich resource.—Con­
nie Ury, Northwest Missouri State University, 
cjury@mail.nwmissouri.edu 

C&RL NewsOctober 2004 / 551 

mailto:cjury@mail.nwmissouri.edu
http://www
mailto:vankirk@lib.muohio.edu