Rural Law Online - A new resource for rural Victoria

21 December 2004

Rural Law Online, a new project initiated by the Victoria Law Foundation went live this week. CECC has provide the technology services which underpin the online delivery of this invaluable resource for rural Victorians. Based on the Rural Law Handbook publication, the website provides extensive information on legal matters in plain language. With a rural and regional focus the website also offers a legal service locator, discussion forums and a legal terms glossary. The website contains information on over 500 topics of law including environment and planning, land and its uses, vehicles and firearms, crops, employment law and dealing with disputes.

Through the Rural Law Online project, CECC has further expanded its product suite. This sophisticated functionality will provide website managers with a simple and effective method of maintaining the expansive content within the site. Content authors can contribute changes and new content from all over Australia using a centralised web-based content management system. This system incorporates workflow processes to ensure content is reviewed before being published live to the website. The entire Handbook content has been stored in XML format providing the facility to transform the content into different formats. This allows changes to be made to the website over time while still retaining the ability to generate a hard-copy version of the handbook from the same source.

The new functionality developed in-house at CECC can be customised to meet the needs of any organisation that wishes to publish and maintain an online book or other information resource.

It is expected that Rural Law Online will be officially launched in February 2005.