Q and A

Question: "Can I create a google blog?"
Answer: Yes.  Go to www.blogger.com and here is a link to a blog I started for you to use to share your ideas with me about legal research on the web:
https://paralegal235.blogspot.com/2025/01/using-google-blogs.html

Question: "What is this I hear about Google perspectives filter?"

Answer from Google:
"You’ll now see more pages that are based on first-hand experience, or are created by someone with deep knowledge in a given subject. And as we underscore the importance of “experience” as an element of helpful content, we continue our focus on information quality and critical attributes like authoritativeness, expertise and trustworthiness, so you can rely on the information you find."

We will take a look at this new filter a bit more deeply in one of our sessions.

Question: " I am searching for reports about an incident that took place a few years ago and wondered if there are sites where you can search through old newspapers and magazines?"

Answer:
Nearly all major city and large county libraries have digital archives of old newspapers and some magazines.  This would be my first place to look.  Check with your local public library about digital copies of the old newspapers.  In one of our sessions I will demonstrate searching one of these newspaper collections.

Question: "I am using fine screen recorder but have three monitors connected to the computer and it records all three screens, so how do I just capture one of the screens not all three?"

Answers:

See screen shot above - choose duplicate rather than extend when you want to screen capture.  See answer #3 below

1. I am assuming you are using the free version of fine screen capture and so are not able to use the option to just capture a region of the screen and that MAY be the problem but...see #2

2. Try to use PowerPoint's insert screen option because it does allow you to select a portion of the screen and should allow you to just pick the monitor screen you are interested in capturing.

3. Third possibility is that you’ve extended your display, and the system understands all monitors as a single screen so change our display settings and return to the PC Screen Only option to take screenshots or to use fine screen recorder to just capture the PC screen.  See the video below about how to change your settings regarding dual or multiple screens.

https://youtu.be/elLy-cZV7JE

Question June 2023

Can you put a page on the website with all the links to those legal research resource pages you told us about?

Answer:
Yes - I put it on our site as a separate page and we will review each site as to the benefit of use.  Click here to open that page:

Question June 2023
How do you get to the Advanced Search option in Google Chrome?

Answer:

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

On this page I will answer any questions you ask at the end of any session or via email:

Question July 29

Are there other ways to download a whole website?

Answer:

Yes but the best way to capture a website is to use Fine Screen Recorder or PowerPoint's Insert Screen option demonstrated in the last session because all of the following methods will have problems with audio and video and any animations on the sites.  Once you have captured all the site into an mp4 file you can then pause the video and make screen clips of the frames of the video into jpg files if you need to have individual pages for evidence.  But the following do a pretty good job if you do not need audio and video off of a website.  I WARN, ONCE AGAIN, NOT TO INSTALL ANY SOFTWARE ON YOUR COMPUTER WITHOUT HAVING YOUR I.T. TECHNICIANS TEST IT ON A TEST COMPUTER.

THE RIGHT BUTTON CLICK ON A PAGE AND SAVE OPTION REQUIRES NO ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE ALTHOUGH THE LINKS IN THE SAVED PAGES WILL NOT WORK WITHOUT YOU MODIFYING THE LINKS, YOU STILL DO HAVE EACH INDIVIDUAL PAGE - MINUS, OF COURSE, THE AUDIO AND VIDEO.

1.  WebCopy

How to Download an Entire Website With WebCopy

https://www.cyotek.com/cyotek-webcopy

• 1. Install and launch the app.

  2. Navigate to File > New to create a new project.

  3. Type the URL into the Website field.

  4. Change the Save folder field to where you want the site saved.

  5. Play around with Project > Rules… ... 

  6. Navigate to File > Save As… to save the project.

2. HTTrack

HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

WinHTTrack is the Windows (from Windows 2000 to Windows 10 and above) release of HTTrack, and WebHTTrack the Linux/Unix/BSD release. See the download page.

3. THIS WEBSITE SUGGESTS SEVERAL OTHER METHODS - ONE IS TO READ THE WEBSITE FROM CACHE SEE BELOW LINK

https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/read-download-website-offline/

Question July 29

What are some of the free websites that can be used for various purposes not necessarily web research?

Answer:

This is a youtube video that describes 10 of what he considers the best free websites on the internet.  It includes a free photoshop like image editing program, image identifier and much more.

https://youtu.be/qdezE6KguGU

Question July 29

If you save a web page using right button click on it and save to your local computer will the hyperlinks still work if the web page is taken down?

Answer:

No, the links will try to find the page on the web.  However, if you save each of the pages to your local computer, then modify the hyperlinks to point them to the pages where they are stored on your computer, then the links will of course work off your computer hard drive or your network drive depending on where you saved the pages.

Question July 26

How do you find out who owns a website?

Answer:

To find out who owns a domain, you can use a WHOIS lookup service.

...

We will be using ICANN to find out the domain owner.

• 1. To begin, open your browser and go to ICANN. https://lookup.icann.org/lookup

  2. Now, in the search box, enter the domain name that you want to search for.

  3. Click on 'Lookup' and the search will begin.

  4. It will provide you with a method for contacting the owner of the url- most of the time the name of the owner is hidden for privacy but through the provider of the url you can try to get in touch with the owner - usually a form is supplied you fill out with your information.

  5. Another website that discusses this well is at: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-find-out-who-actually-owns-a-domain-name/

Question July 22

Does Google Scholar offer a shepardizing tool to show if the case has been overturned, etc.?  If not, what do you suggest as a free service for that?

Answer:

First a bit of history regarding "shepardizing" and then a consideration of whether Google Scholar could be used as a free shephardizing method.

Shepard's Citations is a citator used in United States legal research that provides a list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority.[1] The verb Shepardizing (sometimes written lower-case) refers to the process of consulting Shepard's to see if a case has been overturned, reaffirmed, questioned, or cited by later cases.[1] Although the name is trademarked, it is also used informally by legal professionals to describe citators in general[citation needed]—for example, Westlaw's similar electronic citator called KeyCite. Prior to the development of electronic citators like KeyCite during the 1990s, Shepard's was the only legal citation service that attempted to provide comprehensive coverage of U.S. law.[1]

The name derives from a legal service begun by Frank Shepard (1848–1902) in 1873, when Shepard began publishing these lists in a series of books indexed to different jurisdictions.[1] Initially, the product was called Shepard's Adhesive Annotations. The citations were printed on gummed, perforated sheets, which could be divided and pasted onto pages of case law. Known as "stickers", these were literally torn to bits and stuck to pertinent margins of case reporters.

By the early 20th century, the Frank Shepard Company was binding the citations into maroon volumes with Shepard's Citations stamped in gold on their spines, much like the ones still found on library shelves.[2]

Under the leadership of William Guthrie Packard, the company endured the Great Depression and continued to grow. It moved to Colorado Springs in 1948; in 1951, it adopted the name Shepard's Citations, Inc.[3] In 1966, Shepard's Citations was acquired by McGraw Hill.[4]

In 1996, Shepard's was purchased by Times Mirror and Reed Elsevier (owner of LexisNexis since 1994).[5] In 1998, LexisNexis bought full ownership of Shepard's.[6] After this acquisition, LexisNexis engaged in a "multi-million-dollar Citations Redesign (CR) project" that "redesigned the way we process case law and citations".[2]

Here is one suggestion:

Select a jurisdiction by clicking “select courts” and then place a check mark next to the courts you would like to search. If you look to the the top of any opinion's page, you will see a link to the "How Cited" feature.Mar 3, 2021

You could compare the results with a free trial version of Keycite

https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/forms/try-westlaw