In case you missed the article in last month’s Sherman Shares and if you haven’t yet heard of a blog, you probably won’t escape them much longer. A blog (or weblog) is basically an online journal or publication that consists of entries and/or articles about a particular topic.

According to a recent e-mail from TargetX, a leading provider of interactive marketing technology and services to nearly 400 colleges and universities, the blog bandwagon will only continue to pick up more speed in the coming months.

“Two recent reports suggest it’s hurtling ahead at a rate that’s astonishing even for the Internet,” the company says. “Blog visitation jumped 31 percent from January to July [2005], reports eMarketer Inc., and 50 million Internet users in the U.S. alone visited one or more blogs in the first quarter of 2005.”

Blogs are attracting “enormous numbers of visitors who like the candor, informality and freshness of what they find,” TargetX reports.

To stay ahead of the curve in these trends in higher education, Sherman now maintains a blogging community featuring nearly a dozen bloggers – including five student bloggers, Director of Admission Lisa Hildebrand’s Admission blog, plus several brand new faculty bloggers.

Faculty blogs include the Dean of Clinical Science Blog by Bob Irwin, D.C.; the Ethics and Jurisprudence Blog and the Practice Management Blog by Professor of Clinical Sciences Leslie M. Wise, D.C.; the Center for Instructional Technology Blog by Instructional Designer and Webmaster Joy Gayler; and News and Musings from the Library Assistant by Learning Resources Center Assistant Emmy Weeks.

For a comprehensive list of all of Sherman’s blogs, go to http://www.sherman.edu/edu/academics/blogs.html. Happy reading!