Frequency of Updates: Research is performed at least once a week to identify new regulatory actions affecting Native Americans. Every two weeks, the bulletin will provide citations to new regulatory information, provided that relevant regulatory information is found. If relevant information is not found within two weeks, the bulletin will be replaced with all new information as soon as new information is found. Email alerts will be sent out on the same day as new information has been published to the web site. All older information will be stored in the bulletin archives.

Selection Policy & Process: The National Indian Law Library (NILL) endeavors to retrieve important federal regulatory notices, proposed rules and rules that deal with a federal Indian law issue. (By "Indian law" we mean materials that deal with the "status of the Indian tribes and their special relationship to the federal government, with all the attendant consequences for the tribes and their members, the states and their citizens, and the federal government" as defined by Judge William Canby, Jr., an Indian law scholar (Canby, William C., Jr. American Indian Law in a Nutshell, 3rd ed. St. Paul, Minn: West Group, 1998).)

We run a very broad search in the Westlaw Federal Register database to identify new Indian law materials. The database may not contain all documents and the research strategy may not identify every document in the database. In addition to the search on Westlaw, we monitor Indian law Internet lists and groups and receive tips from colleagues on regulatory action. During this process, the non-attorney library staff uses its judgment as to which cases should be included in the bulletin. Therefore, this bulletin should not be considered an exhaustive list of cases, and should not substitute for independent research and does not constitute legal advice.

Notices and proposed and adopted rules relating to the unified agenda, proposed information collection, draft environmental impact statements, repatriation and minor technical corrections andnd repatriation are generally excluded. Information relating to grant opportunities were generally not included until 4/08 unless they related to education and economic development. "Related news stories," which accompany some of the cases, are selected based on the criteria set out in the News Bulletin "about" page.

Sources of Information: We provide notice and rule summaries from the Federal Register and links to the notices, proposed rules or rules freely available on the Internet at the GPO Access (http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/) web site. See the News Bulletin "about" page for sources of information for "related news stories."

Researcher: David Selden, M.L.S., Law Librarian for the National Indian Law Library (NILL)

Searching & Browsing Tips: Federal regulatory information is listed in reverse chronological order. Only the current month's list of regulatory actions will appear on the bulletin. Older regulatory bulletins can be located on the "archives" page. Bi-monthly, annual and multi-year archives will be developed in the future.

Indexing: Indexing will be provided in the future.

Archiving: Bi-monthly, annual and multi-year archives class are planned for the future.