The new website: what's changed?
Welcome to the new Adam Smith Institute website. It should be a significant improvement on the old one, being a lot more user-friendly and, hopefully, stylish. Most of the old website’s structure has been preserved, so you shouldn’t have any trouble navigating around the key sections. There are a few changes, though:
Research: We’ve collected all our work into one section that encompasses our reports, books and articles. The difference between these should be clearer than it has been: reports discuss a particular policy issue or idea; articles are closer to being a magazine-style extended article about an idea; books are much more broad and often educational in focus. It's still easy to focus on one section in particular by clicking on the drop-down menu under Research. As always, everything is absolutely free and we're hoping to provide eReader-compatible versions of our longer publications in 2012.
Articles: We’ve renamed our think pieces as Articles, and we’re giving them a lot more prominence than before. I want this section to host magazine-style articles written by people from across the classical liberal and libertarian spectrum. If you want to write for us on issues interesting to classical liberals and libertarians, such as political engagement (is politics a waste of time?), liberalism in history (is medieval Iceland proof that government isn’t essential?), or something else entirely, this is the place for it. Articles need not reflect any ASI line, but should be written from a liberal perspective and spark a debate among classical liberals and libertarians. It’s a great way to get more involved with the Adam Smith Institute too – if you have an idea or article you’d like to submit, please send it to sam@old.adamsmith.org.
Students: As well as old favourites like The Next Generation and our student conferences, we’ve added links to the Freedom Week website and our student partner organizations, such as the Liberty League and European Students for Liberty. The biggest addition is our new Learning About Liberty section, which gives a list of books, blogs, websites and media resources to use as a starting point in learning about the classical liberal tradition. This will be updated frequently – leave your suggestions in the comments of this post.
Blog: The most active and visited section of the site has been given a refit and been rechristened as The Pin Factory Blog. Adam Smith famously used a pin factory as a demonstration of the power of cooperation to boost productivity. When people work together voluntarily, the result can be a lot more than the sum of its parts. I think that’s a nice analogy to use for one of my favourite parts of the site.
I hope you like the new site as much as I do. As with any change, there will be some hiccups – if you’re having any trouble with the site, let me know at sam@old.adamsmith.org.
