Sponsored by the Office of Justice Programs’ National Institute of Justice, the National Clearinghouse for Science, Technology and the Law (NCSTL) at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida, recently added a number of new and useful resources for law enforcement and corrections professionals to its website.
These resources include the following:
- The Cold Case Toolkit (developed in February 2007 and continually updated) provides links to information in areas that include NIJ and U.S. Department of Justice resources, investigative tools and technology, State government and police department websites that solicit information from visitors about cold cases, investigation resources and training, victim assistance, and prevention resources. The toolkit also includes a bibliography of resources on cold case information.
- A series of bibliographies offering information on a variety of current interest topics, such as New Developments in Forensics, Calmatives and Less Lethal Weapons, Identity Theft, and the CSI Effect. New bibliographies are posted periodically, often when special research is requested related to an NCSTL conference or training.
- Four recently acquired special collections include the Caywood Collection of documents and firearms resources; a Questioned Document Article Database from the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners; the Florida Division of the International Association for Identification’s archive of its newsletters; and a reference index containing 1,900 latent print, footwear, tire track, and miscellaneous forensic examinations files citations.
- Coordination with the www.dna.gov website now provides a direct link to the NCSTL database from that site when a user queries for information related to legislation and the law. (NCSTL staff note that other sites are welcome to create this kind of link and that no permission or formal agreement is needed.)
- It’s Evident, a free electronic newsletter published quarterly, includes articles written by NCSTL staff (outside submissions are also welcome). All NCSTL site members automatically receive the newsletter, and other individuals can subscribe by sending an e-mail to watson@law.stetson.edu. Archived issues can be located on the NCSTL website.
More than 30,000 new entries into the NCSTL database in the past 3 years raise the current record total to approximately 60,000. Many of the new entries relate to hot topics such as bioterrorism, cybercrime, arson and explosives, law enforcement technology, accident investigation, and the CSI effect. In addition to the rapid expansion of the database, many new related links have been added to the site.
To become acquainted with the National Clearinghouse for Science, Technology and the Law and all of its resources, visit www.ncstl.org.
This article was reprinted from the Spring 2008 edition of TechBeat, the award-winning quarterly newsmagazine of the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center System, a program of the National Institute of Justice under Cooperative Agreement #2005–MU–CX–K077, awarded by the U.S. Department of Justice.
