By Mark Shainblum
Join us as we unearth the hidden gems and secret places on the websites of McGill University and its affiliated institutions.
Blogs McGill
As the name not-so-subtly implies, Blogs McGill is the University’s shiny new central headquarters for, well, blogs. Built on the extremely popular WordPress blogging platform, the site gives faculties, departments, administrative units, research groups and publishers of official university publications the power to put a blog online almost overnight, without the technical hassles of setup, customization and maintenance. The service already hosts blogs published by the Faculty of Science, the Office of the CIO, Content & Collaboration Services, the Economic Task Force and the McGill School of Environment, to name only a few, with many more on the way.
The Marginal
http://www.gslis.mcgill.ca/marginal/
An e-zine published by the McGill Library and Information Studies Student Association (MLISSA), the Marginal’s pedigree stretches all the way back to 1994. According to legend [http://www.gslis.mcgill.ca/marginal/StoryoftheMarginal.htm] the head of a bank’s private library came to deliver a guest lecture where he reportedly said: “Because we’re a special library we only serve the needs of the bank. We don’t have to deal with all those marginal people outside.” Boredom instantly turned to outrage, and the Marginal was born. The Spring, 2009 issue sports a snappy, slick new design and several features which should interest everyone, not just proto-librarians. These include a brief history of the gay archives of Quebec, a look a CKUT’s music library, an essay on the importance of reading blogs (please see above), and an article about creating effective images in PowerPoint.
Do you know of any great McGill web gems we haven’t covered yet? Please send them to mark.shainblum@mcgill.ca