RIGHTS! Civil and Human Rights Law Portal

On September 1, 2020, LLMC, a non-profit Minnesota-based consortium of law libraries, launched the open-access portal RIGHTS! (http://www.llmc.com/rights/home.aspx). If you are looking for primary materials such as current constitutions, human/civil rights acts, Non-Governmental Organizations’ websites, advocacy organizations, and other resources specifically dealing with injustices regarding marginalized parties, this is the place to look. Their stated mission is preserving legal titles and government documents, while making copies inexpensively available digitally through its on-line service, LLMC-Digital (http://www.llmc.com/about.aspx). The original intent was to focus on primarily US and Canadian sources, as seen by the dropdown navigation on the left of the site, but the site also includes other international sources. The page opens at the “Civil and Human Rights Law Portal—Global,” which includes links to various government organizations, judicial information, non-governmental organizations, research and education resources and various documents from different countries. The RIGHTS! site can also be reached through the parent page (http://LLMC.com) with the link to RIGHTS! Located in the right-hand column. The RIGHTS! Portal is sponsored by the Vincent C. Immel Law Library at Saint Louis University.

To move into the sections on the United States or Canada, there are drop down navigation boxes on the left of the page. The user may select either of these two countries, and from there, select a state or province to find more specific information. Each of the country pages include the same category breakdown seen on the “Global” page: Gateways, Governmental Organizations, Judicial, Non/Intra-Governmental Organizations, Research and Educational Resources, and Documents. When the user selects a specific province or state, the page then moves to a more limited list with some of these categories.

Overall, this is a well-organized site with large amounts of useful information, but its biggest drawback is navigation. The only way to return to the “Global” information is with the back button on the browser. Also, once you select a specific province or state, it is difficult to switch to the other country successfully. You are dependent on the browser buttons more than the navigation dropdowns, as they don’t seem to work quite as expected.

This site is excellent for browsing, but I was unable to find a way to search for a specific agency or government organization. Currently, this is not a problem as there are only the three options: Global, Canada, and United States, so finding what you want is not difficult. As this site expands in scope, hopefully expanded navigation will follow. —Dominique Hallett (dhallett@astate.edu), Government Information and STEM Librarian, Arkansas State University