Australia's oldest institution of higher learning has become the country's first to allow its employees the opportunity to host their own university-sponsored weblogs, the Australian newspaper reports, writes David Cohen
The University of Sydney has invited its 5,900 general staff, including 2,400 academics, to use the new academically-badged blogs to "collaborate with one another, to reach out to industry and the wider public, to share knowledge and engage in debate". Some of the existing blogs offering a take on academic life Down Under can be seen
here, here and, let's not forget, here.
The university, which has also recruited nine paid student bloggers, says it will not editorially meddle with the staff contributions.
Even so, the standard university policy on computers applies, forbidding any use deemed to be "illegal, unethical or inappropriate" or anything that would cause "embarrassment or loss of reputation" to Sydney. Which might seem to rule out the chance of anything terribly earth-shattering ever seeing the electronically published light of day - quite unlike one recently constituted academic blog in the US, which may yet provide some of the year's funkier online dispatches.
Junichi Semitsu, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law has been designated the official blogger for the US group the Dixie Chicks.
Something for UK academics to aspire to perhaps?
