A great online historical tour of the University of Guelph campus is now available. It doesn’t feature whizzbang flash effects or implement AJAX functionality. Instead, it delivers a smooth and effective tour in a simple and compelling fashion with simple html. It’s pleasingly lo-tech, well executed and a great example of matching technology to needs.
I stumbled onto the link when I was adding the UofG RSS feed to my reader this morning. It’s an obscure link on the University of Guelph website and easily missed, which is my biggest criticism of the implementation. The University should make a bigger deal about their ability to provide a virtual experience of one of the finest University campuses in Canada. The other criticism is that when ‘taking’ the tour there are no credits given for who contributed to the project. It’s a great implementation and initiative and I for one would like to know and applaud those who made it possible. I did a quick search and discovered short stories in back issues of the alumni magazine (I get one of these, but missed the story last year) and in the weekly official newspaper at Guelph. The project apparently stems from the passion of a Guelph alumnus in chemistry, Martin Bosch. He spearheaded the placement of a series of historical plaques around campus and clearly he or someone else felt an accompanying web tour would complement the project. This tour is well overdue. I think this is a great project and superb execution, I only wish that the creators had greater acknowledgment and that the university was making a bigger deal about it.
This of course got me thinking about how other universities celebrate their heritage. The immediate sense is that they celebrate it by constantly canvassing donors and university history focuses on alumni. This is not to say that this is not an absolutely essential exercise, but I wonder about what role institutional heritage plays in the minds of students, both current and potential. How well does the school market itself to its existing and future clients (apologies for those that don’t like the commercial usage, but I couldn’t use the ever increasingly popular ‘stakeholders’).
A quick canvas of Canadian university websites reveals that remembering campus heritage is a mixed bag. No surprise there.
University of Victoria: Features a nice photomontage. I personally love aerial shots and watching the evolution of a plan into reality is fascinating, but I am struck by the lack of people in the story and the broad scale of the perspective.
The University of British Columbia has a goodly collection of online histories. They have collected these into a list. Unfortunately, with this there is a lack of cohesion. You can wander off and explore things at your leisure, but its three levels below the main web level. Again, rather removed from mainstream university culture. But hey, I didn’t know that UBC is just a branch campus of McGill ;-)
Interestingly, the University of Alberta, has collected a series of articles from their alumni magazine into a comprehensive history of the school. They combine a look at the campus and its buildings and the actual founders of the school. Its about the third level down again, but once you find the link and work down you are presented with a thoughtful site.
The University of Calgary advertises that ‘this is now.’ Well, they seem to live up to their slogan. I’m still looking to find out where they celebrate their heritage. I guess the focus is on the future. Searching did uncover a 12 page supplement to their yearbook from the recent past in which the creators lament that the institution does not promote its history more. I sense that this call went unheeded.
The University of Saskatchewan has a short and terse official history page, but promisingly they do point to the prospective students page for promised virtual tours. They are three Quicktime VR panoramas here. Well, at least they are in the prospective area, but they are focusing on current lifestyle as opposed to a sense of embedding the present in the past. I do find this a little ironic given that the banner on every page on the site is currently trumpeting the 100 year anniversary of the institution.
The University of Regina seems to pull a single short page from their undergrad calendar. That’s it. No pictures, no romance copy.
I’ll continue the tour and analysis a little later…stayed tuned for part II
There is a pattern forming here. Many institutions are getting on board and providing neat little glitzy Quicktime (generally) tours of a couple choice spots on campus for prospective students. Some provide good archival research documenting their heritage (usually directed towards alumni — we do need to maintain the connection), but there is a huge divide between these two exercises. I guess that’s why I was so taken to see the Guelph effort. Maybe that’s not how students today are shopping for an institution. Maybe that’s now how students at an institution today sense their place in the larger scheme of things.
Forward thinking is great, but what about a sense of where one sits both spatially and temporally?