Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
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The start of the new academic year sees the roll-out of a new access management system (AMS) to the students at the Faculty of Law in Cambridge. The way we utilise the numerous on-line legal resources is rapidly changing because the Athens system has now reached some form of critical mass. Athens is a system of user authentication and verification, allowing service providers to rely on Athens to distribute, maintain and control identities for users in affiliated establishments. Previously, Athens had been more popular amongst scientists (including the NHS) and other academic users, but the resources becoming available now make it an attractive solution for accessing legal and business resources too.
Put simply, Athens allows each student/user to have a unique identity and password which provides them access to all Athens authenticated resources from a web browser anywhere in the world. The benefit of this for the Faculty of Law comes from the range of legal and sociological sources which have now joined the scheme, including Butterworths (Direct and Lexis products), JSTOR (the Scholarly Journal Archive), Context (Justis) and soon, Westlaw UK. Combined with the transparent IP authentication systems which we already employ to allow students to access some resources from campus computers without any identification at all, Athens goes a long way towards removing the barrier to use of the myriad logons and over-complex passwords of the past. The password access is available on campus, but also through any other computer - allowing use at a users home or even abroad. Making accessibility as broad and as simple as possible is key to encouraging the learning and use of these resources.
Athens began development in 1994 created by NISS (National Information Services and Systems), which was then part of the University of Bath and is now within EduServe an independent, registered charity (which also includes CHEST). Funding for the project comes partly from making a charge to the service providers, and partly from the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC) of the Funding Councils in the UK, which has committed to backing the service until 2003. Through this arrangement, the use of Athens is free to the institutions and end-users.
An institution joining Athens must appoint a local administrator to govern the system, and manage applications by end users. Classes of user are created identifying the resources which will be available to those users, and the expiry date of those resources. This allows, for example, a class of first year undergraduates to be created for which access will expire automatically in three years. Service Providers clearly prefer this arrangement for copyright and licence reasons, while it avoids the need for institutions to change confusing and meaningless passwords each year in order to prevent unauthorised use.
Users are given information relating to their class of users (their Access Account) and can then visit the Athens website (http://http://www.athens.ac.uk/) to create their own Personal Account. The Personal Account allows a wider access to the resources available, and has the added advantage of allowing the user to select their own username (with a specified prefix) and password - far easier to remember and use than an incomprehensible string of letters and numbers! Many of the resources we utilise now employ specific Athens logon screens (such as Butterworths) while others, such as justis http://www.justis.com have succeeded in integrating the system even deeper by allowing an Athens user through their main logon link.
It is this sort of simplification and flexibility to allow users to easily access a broad range of resources from any Internet connection which makes Athens such a simple, but effective concept. Many organisations also have institution-wide access agreements to resources and users from other disciplines can find themselves using sources to which they did not even realise they had access before. With more than 1 million registered users by the middle of this year, it is clear that Athens has a number of supporters, and many services both in the UK and internationally are now seeking authentication. As the list of services and users grows, the argument for Athens becomes more compelling still.
Daniel Bates, Freshfields Legal IT Teaching & Development Officer, University Of Cambridge, email db298@cam.ac.uk.
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