Court TV Home Page
You can't be serious. A television-related site chosen as Professional Site of the Month? We Internet-users are far superior to television watchers, right? We can't denigrate the interactive and information packed Internet by judging it on the basis of a television product that happens to have a Web site. Television is the opiate of the masses! The Internet will save the world! (And we all know that the Internet was really invented by dolphins using extraterrestrial technology.)

Court TV's Internet entrant, the Court TV Law Center, is not only a good source of law information, it also manages to redeem television, as much as that is possible. The site's basic utilities are a search engine and a glossary of legal terms. The glossary isn't comprehensive, but it does cover enough ground to clarify any of the cases presented here. The search engine is a good shortcut for finding a particular case without going through any indexes.

The home page, like any good table of contents, organizes the site by departments and features. When I was there, O.J.'s face adorned the feature section, with a hyper-link to his deposition in the civil suit brought against him by the Goldmans. Can we ever escape O.J.? Also featured was a special area on the Telecom bill which had recently passed, containing many articles about various aspects of the legislation and what it would mean to Internet users. The 20-plus articles here provided more depth and clarification than you would get from reading the actual text of the bill.

The departments include case files, a library, games, a kids section, and a store. Of course, Court TV's idea of games isn't the typical puzzle or maze a lot of other sites offer. It has various historical cases in which you are invited to identify the facts, make arguments, and decide the case. This is the kind of stuff that law students live for. The library section isn't Harvard Law, you couldn't use it as a substitute for Lexis, but it does have articles and files on cases that would be of interest to casual users. Under the Newsmakers reference, you can find out the legal gossip on your favorite stars. Call it pop law, but it is good for really understanding the big cases in the papers, and looking really smart at cocktail parties as you offer your informed commentary.-WKC

A

Annals of Saudi Medicine
The Annals of Saudi Medicine is a good resource for health care professionals interested in geographically focused medical studies. Original articles, case reports, letters to the editor, editorials, and review articles deal with all aspects of clinical, academic, and investigative medicine and research. Papers are written in English, and include studies with appropriately convoluted titles and obscure subject-matter, like the one detailing a 10-year retrospective review of patients with scorpion stings at the Emergency Department of the King Fahad National Guard Hospital in Riyadh.-LG

B

CSUWEB: RTFM Web Style
I didn't want to go in there. The glare from the gray standard browser background would burn my eyes, my throat would be parched from the dryness of the content, and, not knowing the terrain, I would be lost. Send me to the new Disney site I cried. But the story was in there, and I had to get it. Software manuals, a whole library of online software manuals. But these aren't your latest Microsoft products, these are the hardcore, the pure stuff: GNU programs for Unix. I feel faint.-WKC

B

Dealmakers
Somewhere in the grayed out fringes of corporate America is a realm called commercial real estate. Those Taco Bells and Marshall's don't just come with prefabricated buildings, you know, an agent has to find store space to colonize. And if that agent is smart, they probably already subscribe to the print version of Dealmakers. The online version is just as massive a compendium of available commercial space as the print version, plus it has the best list of links to real estate related sites on the Web. While an attempt has been made at graphics, I found them ugly, and all these listings could use a little computerized database wizardry.-WKC

B+

Internet Law Library
I'm pretty certain that this site could in no way be duller or blander in appearance than it already is. We're talking the most basic of basic Netscape gray and hyperlink a la blue, which may be fine for a law library... You'll find 11 copies of the US constitution (one in Spanish), every other country on the planet's constitution, attorney and legal directory links, reviews of law books, and a few measly icons (mostly US flag variations). It's great as a stockpile of information, which is what it's all about. Outstanding for lawyers and legal wanna-be's.-SK

B+

Journal of Biological Chemistry
Casual passers-by and armchair scientists will be thoroughly mystified by the boldly obscure nomenclature at this site, which only proves its worth to the bona fide bio chemist. If, for instance, you're into carbohydrates, lipids, and other natural products, you can peruse full articles or abstracts on topics like "Investigation of the Calcium-mediated Association between the Carbohydrate Head Groups of Galactosylceramide and Galactosylceramide...."And, as even the most brilliant science maven might sometimes have trouble navigating the Web, a convenient online handbook helps you waltz through everything at the site, from keyword searches to downloading related charts.-LG

A-

Legal Information Institute
Another information dump on the over-used superhighway metaphor, this one contains articles on legal topics and the entire U.S. Code in HTML format. This digital-communication-age-wealth- of-information still amazes me, but the poor organization of these pages makes the amount seem overwhelming. One of the first paragraphs on the home page has some of the major resources linked within the text, such as the index of recent supreme court decisions, but these links aren't in the index at the bottom of the page, which looks like a table of contents for the site.-WKC

A-

PawSafe
"Making a difference, one pet at a time." Hmmm. Hope my pet is first in line! Actually though, this site is about pets that need to be rescued - dogs and cats to adopt (with pictures as a super bonus). PawSafe also lists ways you can help -a wish list and volunteer opportunities. Check out the organizations mission (yawn) or trot over to the store for pet purchases. Woof. The layout is ok, with some nifty Table construction, but overall it's pretty dry. -SK

B

PCL Map Collection
Map devotees know that the charting of any terrae incognitae is much more than simple diagramming: it's art. The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection Online is an incredible resource for those seeking practical guidance (like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood maps) to the aesthetically inspiring (the early 20th century city map of Antakya in the Levant). With more than 230,000 maps covering every area of the world - including some nine thousand city street maps, as well as current road maps for each US state and Canadian province - this site's URL is sure to remain at the top of just about everybody's bookmark list.-LG

A