Finding Goverment Documents on the Internet

Online, Participatory MCLE for California, New York and Arizona Attorneys

INSTRUCTIONS: Read the Web site descriptions and the fact patterns in the column on the right. Answer all of the following questions for one hour of MCLE credit. Use the hyperlinks included in the questions to find your answers.

State Bar of California, New York, or Arizona MCLE Certificates of Completion will be issued after the quiz materials on this page are completed by the Attorney and returned to Internet For Lawyers with appropriate payment.

CALIFORNIA: Internet For Lawyers certifies that this activity has been approved for MCLE credit by the State Bar of California in the amount of 1 hour of general participatory credit. Internet For Lawyers is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider.

ARIZONA: The State Bar of Arizona does not approve or accredit CLE activities for the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education requirement. This activity may qualify for 1 hour of "interactive" credit toward your annual CLE requirement for the State Bar of Arizona, when used in conjunction with materials available on this site to actively search the Internet for exam solutions. This includes ZERO hours of professional responsibility.

WEST VIRGINIA: As a member in good standing of the Association of Continuing Legal Education (ACLEA), Internet For Lawyers is recognized as an "Approved Provider" by the West Virginia State Bar. This activity qualifies for 1 hour of credit toward your annual CLE requirement under the West Virginia Rules for Mandatory Continuing Legal Education. No more than half of the mandatory continuing legal education requirements (6 hours) may be satisfied by video/audio tape or online instructions.

State Bar of California, New York, or Arizona MCLE Certificates of Completion will be issued after self-study materials are completed by the Attorney and returned to Internet For Lawyers.

USA.gov is the federal governmentís portal that allows you to search through every word of millions of pages of federal, state, local, tribal, District of Columbia, and U.S. territories documents. Many of these documents would not be found anywhere else. This is especially true of those government documents that are posted in file formats other than HTML, such as PDF (e.g. tax forms) and Microsoft Office Suite file formats. USA.gov uses a search engine powered by MSN Search. In addition, USA.gov offers jurisdictional and agency directories that link to government Web sites.

Quiz Registration

Name: *

Your full name.

E-Mail: *

Your email address..

State of Bar Membership:

2 Letter State

Bar ID Number:

Paralegals should leave this blank.

Title:

Company:

Address:

For greater security, no identifying information is carried over from your credit card payment to this form.

Phone Number:

Finding Goverment Documents on the Internet

Question 1 When you don't know an agency's URL, click on the link on the lower right-hand side of USA.gov's home page (http://www.usa.gov/), which is labeled "A-Z AGENCY INDEX." Find the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationπs URL by clicking on the "N" link and scrolling down the page.:

http://www.nhtsa.gov/

http://www.nhtsa.dot.us

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/

http://www.nhtsa.gov.us

Question 2 Using the URL from your answer above, visit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Web site and use their internal search engine (the search query box is found on the left bar of the home page) to answer this question:

Your client's child was injured in a crash while seated in a small school bus ( 10,000 lb GVWR or less) vs. large. The other bus was a large school bus (over 10,000 lbs GVWR). One school bus had seat belts and one did not have seat belts. Find a May 2006 report to learn whether seat belts in a small school bus (10,000 lbs. or less) are required by the federal government.

Hint: Search using key words such as 10,000 small school bus

Select One:

Yes, seat belts are required.

No, seat belts are not required.

Question 3 Using the information found in question 2, can states or school districts purchase large school buses that already include seat belts?:

Yes

Question 4 USA.gov has an advanced search function that you should know about. Go to http://www.usasearch.gov/ and click on the "Advanced Search" link (located to the right of the search query box). To find a federal government report that is in the Portable Document Format (PDF) titled "Large School Bus Safety Restraint Evaluation," type in the phrase: "school bus safety restraint" (without the quotation marks) into the search box labeled "Return Results With This Exact Phrase," scroll down to "File Type" and from the drop-down menu select "Adobe PDF." You'll see a number of PDF documents returned in your results list, but the full name of the Report will let you know which document to click on. When you click on the link, you should be able to view the PDF version of the Report.

Which last name is not included in the list of authors?:

Elias

Henderson

Sullivan

McCray

Question 5 Like most government reports, this one has a "Recommendations" section that summarizes its findings. Does this report make any specific recommendations regarding seat belts in school busses?

Hint: Instead of scrolling through the nine page report, you can also use "Ctrl F" to pop up the "Find" query box and enter "Recommendations" into the box and click on "Find Next").

Select One:

Yes

Question 6 Another useful feature at USA.gov that you should know about is that when your list of search results is returned, you can narrow them down further: By Topic, By Agency or By Source.

Go to http://www.usa.gov/ and enter these words into the search query box on the top right corner of the home page: school bus injury recall seat belt. You will receive numerous results that can be narrowed down by looking on the left side of the page to the column labeled, "By Topic," "By Agency" or "By Source." "By Topic" will be the default. Look down the list of topics and notice a plus sign to the left of each of the narrower topics.

When you click on the plus sign what happens?

Select One:

You are taken to the most relevant Web Site

More sub-topics are listed

Question 7 Another useful feature at USAsearch.gov that you should know about is that you can limit your search results to documents from a particular site (or sites) or exclude results from a particular site (or sites). For instance, if you know before-hand that you are looking for a document from the National Highway Transportation & Safety Administration, you can limit your results to that particular government agency by entering its URL (e.g., nhtsa.dot.gov) into the "Limit to These Sites" search box. You can add more than one URL by separating them by a space. Conversely, you can enter one or more URLs into the "Exclude these sites" search box to exclude sites from your search results.

In a school bus crash, you discovered that the seat belts were tied in knots to shorten them for small children. To find a federal document from teh National Highway Transportation & Safety Administration that discusses whether this is a safe use of seat belts, go to http://www.usasearch.gov/ and click on the "Advanced Search" link (located to the right of the search query box). Type in the words: school bus knots shorten belt into the "All of these words" search query box and then scroll down to the bottom of the search page to the "Limit to These Sites" search box. Then, enter the URL for the National Highway Transportation & Safety Administration (nhtsa.dot.gov) into the search box to narrow your search results to just this one Web site.

According to the National Highway Transportation & Safety Administration document is it acceptable to add one knot to make a seat belt shorter?

Select One:

Yes

Question 8 To limit search results to law related websites, try Justia's Legal Web Search. Visit Justia at http://www.justia.com and click the "Legal Web" link at the top of the page. To find out if the Department of Transportation in 1999 recommended that school buses for pre-schoolers have Child Safety Restraint Systems, enter these words into the search box to the left of the words "Search Legal Web": guideline school bus child safety restraint system pre-school 1999. To limit your results only to the Department of Transportation, also type in the search instruction site:dot.gov.

Select One:

Yes, the Department of Transportation in 1999 recommended that school buses for pre-schoolers have Child Safety Restraint Systems.

No, the Department of Transportation in 1999 did not recommend that school buses for pre-schoolers have Child Safety Restraint Systems.

Question 9 Google can also be an excellent source for locating government documents. In 2002, The Department of Education of the Province of New Brunswick, Canada issued a pamphlet titled "The Seat Belt Issue," that discussed seat belts in school busses. To find this pamphlet, try a Google search at http://www.google.com.

Enter these two phrases into the Google search box (found on Google's home page): "the seat belt issue" "New Brunswick" (each phrase should be surrounded by quotation marks and there should be a space between each phrase) and also add these two words: 2002 canada (without quotation marks and with spaces between the words).

Is the following True or False: In 2002, New Brunswick was the only province in Canada to require seat belts in school busses.

Select One:

True

False

Question 10 Go to the advanced search menu of Google (http://www.google.com/advanced_search) and enter the word compartmentalization into the "all these words" search box and enter the phrase great seat belt debate into the "this exact wording or phrase" search box. Then, limit your search to a specific domain (http://www.stnonline.com) by entering that URL into the feature on the advanced search page labeled: "Search within a Site or Domain." (Be sure to then click on the "Advanced Search" button located towards the bottom of the Advanced search page, to the far right of the "with all of the words" search box.)

Is this statement True or False? According to School Bus Transportation News "compartmentalization" was coined by UCLA researchers and refers to the design of a seat compartment that should absorb the force of a crash and protect the child. However, the seats currently installed in school buses are different from those recommended by UCLA researchers.

Select One:

True

False

Any other copywritten material or brands contained herein are the properties of their respective owners.

Justia Legal WebSite Design

Search

Finding Goverment Documents on the Internet

Closure links