After overcoming numerous hurdles and showing enormous persistence, SCL HQ has finally succeeded in getting the SCL site accepted by the UK Access Management Foundation and making it JANET/Shibboleth compatible. My congratulations go to all those involved, especially Ruth Baker who has been slogging away on this one since before Plato was a student. My contribution has been crucial, every so often I have remarked on the fact that we are {i}still{/i} not connected and have raised both eyebrows or rolled my eyes – I could tell from their faces that support of that kind has been greatly appreciated by those doing the actual work.
I suppose that there might have been hordes of IT law students desperate to access our quality articles and driven to drink in their frustration. For current IT law students, the good news is that you can eschew your trips to the bar and scan articles from {i}Computers & Law{/i} instead. Even the protected articles are free to those who are linked through their place of learning so those teaching IT law are free to make reference to our articles and will not suffer the frustration of finding their students being blocked from access. As we all know, students can find it very difficult to access copyright protected material so this will make life a good deal easier (I have already pushed my luck with the references to drink – one stereotype a post is my limit).
SCL hopes that the move will inculcate the excellent habit of accessing our sources and that we will see more and more of those entering IT law practice joining the Society and becoming involved in it. Other planks in the bridge from study to a leading role in practice include the Back to Basics series of articles, the newly formed Junior Lawyers Group and the IT law certification scheme. The progress that has been made in these areas over the last 18 months has been genuinely impressive.
In my role as Editor of the magazine and of much of the material on the site, I would be keen to hear about anything we can do to make access more useful still and of course what links or content we might add to make the site even more student-friendly (while carefully protecting the interests of SCL members). If you do have any suggestions, do please let me know – either through the comments box below or via lseastham@aol.com.
