All entries for Wednesday 17 November 2004

Other University blogging systems

Browsing around the other day I managed to end up at a blog on the domain wsu.edu and it got me to thinking about what other universities host blogs.

A quick search of my memory and the web brought up these:

Middlebury College, Vermont, have an MT install that has around 200 or so blogs. Not sure what support there is for this project.

Washington State University has a blogging system, not sure what software it is though. Pleasingly they do provide a home page for the system which lists the most recent entries and provides a few stats:

• Journals – 124
• Posts – 358
• Articles – 40
• Comments – 118
• Trackbacks – 211
  

The system is run by their Center for Teaching Learning, and Technology. There is more information about their blog project here.

Harvard University have one of the oldest blogging systems out there as it was created by one of the old men of blogging, Dave Winer. It is very difficult to see how active the Harvard blogs are, however, judging by this page there are anything from 2 – 20 blogs updated a day out of a total of 623 blogs. Harvard are running Manilla.

University of Minnesota are also one of the early entrants into the university blogging fray. They are running a custom version of MT again, but much more customised than Middlebury. They also provide some stats:

• Total number of blogs: 771
• Blog authors: 1333
• Blog entries: 9977
• Comments to all blogs: 5350
  

Unlike the other systems covered so far, they provide a list of latest entries and an A-Z directory of blogs. The system is run by their Libraries, under the watchful eye of Shane Nackerud.

The University of Waterloo have used blogs in a slightly different way. They have installed a custom version of MT also, but have used it to create a very small set of highly controlled publicity type blogs. There are 6 blogs written by different students that are updated relatively often, at least once a week that provide insights into life at the University. A good publicity tool I think, unsurprising when it is run by their communications office.

And then there's us…I'm sure there are other systems out there that I've missed or that are just keeping quiet or private. But I would love to find out if there are more, and perhaps contact some of them to share ideas/experiences.

: 17 Nov 2004 12:49 |  Tags: Blogging |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem