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Institutional Blogs
- 14 November 2007
We recently received an email from Hanna Neuschwander from the Grad School regarding blogging:
“I’m interested in discussing the possibility of blogging, and how blogs could be incorporated through our website in the new redesign (much like the redesign blog itself, actually, but that an individual department could start up). My understanding is that currently, it would take a lot of work for you guys to set something that up. Is there a Trillium-like (decentralized) way that blog functionality could be incorporated for department sites? E.g., we’d like to set up an alumni book club for Grad School alumni (perhaps Morgan’s talked to you about this)? We think blogging would be the best way to do it. (We can’t do Moodle discussion groups because alumni don’t have active LC IDs/passwords.) Other possible uses — setting up event blogs for conferences that we host, with information and participatory commentary from attendees as the conference happens. Etc.”
And Noah responded:
“Blogs are on the way (maybe operational by next semester?), and are separate from the redesign, which means it will happen sooner. They are being setup and managed by IT, and are intended to address the exact situations you are bringing up.”
What I’ll add to this discussion is that we really don’t yet know how we’ll test and allocate the blogs. I expect Matt West (IT, sysadmin installing the software) may have some insight on this too. (Matt?)
Another issue is that we’ll need to write some use policies around this new service, since the institution should both protect itself (legally) from the freely expressed ideas of the blog authors, yet also include the ability to limit or restrict the service based on the standard cadre of non-protected speech among other unlawful acts.
Thoughts?
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Hi, this is Matthew from IT. Hannah’s comment is a fairly common request, and we have spent the last year doing both market and user-based research. We have decided that Movable Type best fits our institutional needs and have purchased it for our blog solution. I am currently working on getting the server up for private testing and we expect to slowly roll the system out for community use next calendar year.
Due to license cost, we do not plan on having an open system where everyone on campus “gets a blog” as we launch. IT’s plans on working with New Media to launch strategic blogs first, then open it up to departments, professors, conferences, and potentially student groups. Later we may open the system up for students and alumni, depending on demand.
Until then, Hannah’s initial idea of using Moodle is great. If you are interested in having dynamic content online, Moodle may be a good solution until the blogs are launched. We do allow off-campus users to register, especially if it’s an LC program. If you are still interested please contact Client Services at IT to discuss the possibility of having an alumni or conference “course” where discussion boards, polls, blogs, and other activities are available.
Thanks for the clarification, Matthew. Very helpful. Regarding the grad alumni bookclub blog, I actually did speak with Client Services at IT and was told we could not do it, but I assume I must have explained our situation incorrectly. Therefore I look forward to getting the Moodle course up and running soon for all our interested alumni.