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Free Legal and Official Information on the Web: is it Time to Stop Google-Bashing?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2013

Abstract

Is Google a substitute for using known, authoritative websites for cases, legislation and other official information? Ian Hunter writes about the test searches that he carried out on Google and discusses the results he noted. In this exercise, consideration is given to whether the websites retrieved are authoritative and also attention is paid to Google's ranking of results.

Type
Current Issues
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2013. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 Mawson, Maria, (2010) “What do you mean, look it up in the library? Isn't it on the Internet?Legal Information Management, 10(2), 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ebbinghouse, Carol, (2012) The frugal legal researcher. Searcher, 20(10), 36Google Scholar

3 Google searches correctly identified the turnover and company secretary for Laserslide via www.companycheck.co.uk and www.opencorporates.com, though neither of these would be considered authoritative.

4 Miller, C and Bartlett, J, (2012) “Digital fluency”: towards young people's critical use of the internet Journal of Information Literacy, 6(2), 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Pariser, Eli, The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. Penguin Press, 2011.Google Scholar