Several universities have started offering their students and staff blogging facilities. Via blogwithoutalibrary: a list of academic uses of blogs.
One such service is being offered by the University of Minnesota Libraries, run on Movable Type. They have even branded it: UThink. The obvious quetion to ask is why? Why provide students and staff with such a service? In the words of Minnesota Libraries:
Libraries believe passionately in intellectual and academic freedom, and our role as advocates for those freedoms. Blogs are an excellent tool whereby students, faculty and staff at the University can let their opinions be heard. Blogs offer a way to rapidly discuss opinions, issues, and ideas, and allow people from across the country, and campus, to connect with each other through these ideas.
In some ways the blog service is just an extension of the 'web-space' concept - users having access to their own webspace where they can post their own website. Putting it into a blog context streamlines the websites and formalises it somewhat. There is a central repository or entry point for the blogs instead of a wildly random, in content and quality, collection of websites. It also focusses the purpose of the sites on discussion and, oh joy, it encourages people to write.
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