The Faculty Blog is one of the University of Chicago School of Law?s blog sites, with content on all kinds of law news, issues, and cases. Posts come from faculty, alumni, students, and other University affiliates. The blog targets to be a forum for open discussion on anything regarding law. As such, it is open to comments. It has been up and running since September 2008.
The ups and downs
Dialogue through comments and feedback on The Faculty Blog has a very academic atmosphere. Posts on a variety of law topics are accommodated, from debates to critiques and book reviews. Although all posts are in text format, some link to sites with video or audio clips.
The layout is very simple and easy to navigate. The site is split in two columns, the left for blog posts and the right for other navigation options: outside links, categories, archives, recent posts and comments. The site?s colors are also simple — just plain white for background and red and black for the text.
The simplicity, however, is also a downside. Being an academic blog, it is understandable for the site to have a formal appearance, but it does border on becoming a bit boring. Since it is just a two-column layout, there is no dynamics in navigating through the site, just a whole lot of scrolling down, down, and down — not exactly friendly for the non-academic readers. But for its target audience, the layout can be quite acceptable.
There is also no doubt that the content of The Faculty Law Blog is very extensive, which is why its categorization of posts could use a revamp. Posts are mostly classified under authors? names, which is disadvantageous for readers who are not familiar with the posts? authors. Perhaps a separate category list could be made — this time according to subjects of blog posts.
