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Eleanor Roosevelt, 1958

'Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person... Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.' Eleanor Roosevelt, 1958

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The Small Places has moved to a new home here, including all the old posts. Any posts after 6th March 2014 will appear on the new website, but old posts are preserved here so that URLs linking here continue to work. Please check out the new site.

Thursday, 16 May 2013

The beauty of BAILII and RSS feeds

If you would like to set up an RSS feed for new cases mentioning particular key terms from BAILII, then check out what BAILII have been developing with this handy guide from iLegal (and ignore what I wrote below).  Using BAILII's own new RSS system, I have set up feeds for all cases from the European Court of Human Rights mentioning legal capacity and guardianship, feeds for all cases from the UK (and other jurisdictions, in case it's mentioned in passing) mentioning the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and all cases from the UK, Ireland, the ECtHR and the EU mentioning the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

 Ever wished you could have all the published cases about a particular topic or mentioning a particular key term piped directly to you?  Well, wish no longer, because the answer is here!

I am, as many bloggers are, a feed-monkey.  I love RSS feeds, the way they pipe blogs I follow and other feeds directly to my RSS reader, so I don't have to visit each site in turn (I am currently mourning the impending doom of Google Reader, but having a play with Feedly as a replacement).  For some time now I've been thinking, 'wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to set up an alert on BAILII for a particular keyword.  It's really tricky to do though - you can't use Google alerts as BAILII blocks search engines (here's why), and I found having to manually re-check BAILII'S search engine every week or so for new cases rather tiresome.  I dreamed of an RSS feed for ECtHR cases on legal capacity and guardianship, or one for UK cases on the Mental Capacity Act, but the consensus on twitter was that it couldn't be done... Until today, when clever old Judith Townend (of Meeja Law) worked out that you can set up a BAILII search using BAILII's own internal search engine (sorting by date), and then turn that into an RSS feed using Feedity.  It's so easy, you could easily set one up for your key-term tipple of choice.  You could play with setting up alerts for particular citations, judges, statutes... the possibilities are endless.

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1 comment:

  1. jtownend16 May 2013 at 10:03

    Glad to be of service. You'll just need to keep an eye to check they keep updating - I successfully used a Feedity feed on a Bailii search for a while, but noticed today (prompted by your request) that it needed updating. I am sure there are alternatives to Feedity too.

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