The London School of Economics (www.lse.ac.uk) has a very busy homepage with clearly defined links to all its areas. The various sections are all made to sound so interesting that it is hard to know where to start (not a regular complaint when it comes to college sites). One that caught my eye is the link to Fathom. Clicking in you find out that this is a project created by New York's Columbia University and the LSE to project the values and content of the world's greatest universities and cultural institutions into the digital world.
With its assertion that the "e-economy will impact on higher education and academia as surely as it is transforming other aspects of society" this section is vital for anyone interested in education and the Internet (which is everyone reading this page).
Another very interesting aspect to LSE's site is The Runaway World debate. It is the first time I've seen something like this on a university site: people e-mail it their views on the topics of globalisation, risk, family, tradition and democracy. In order to facilitate ideas there is a series of articles on these topics in the section.
LSE is doing very interesting things with its website which go far beyond the mere details of its education programmes, and it is all the better for that.
The University of California at Los Angeles homepage (www.ucla.edu) is most unusual: it features a picture "spotlight" on a student, a graduate or an employee of the college, which links to a short profile.
It is obviously designed to entice people to study there, though how successful it is in this aim depends on your tolerance for pretentious Californians.
Of far more use is the link to the In The News section. This features articles and reports by UCLA staff on such topics as Risky Sex and Drug Use by HIV-Positive Youth, as well as details on the latest college/industry link-ups and research.
Because of the college's size, and its large media faculty, UCLA produces five regular publications, including a daily newspaper, and all are online. Although the content can vary greatly in quality it is more hit than miss. It is a site worth seeing, just ignore the homepage link.
The University of Notre Dame's (www.nd.edu) American-football team styles itself "The Fighting Irish," but don't let that put you off. The homepage picture changes each time you refresh. It varies from laboratory scenes to students on an exchange programme in Spain, and the main building in all its snowbound beauty. Unlike UCLA's, this works as a good ad for the college.
A prominent link from the homepage is to Religious Life. This is highly unusual for a college website, but appropriate for Notre Dame in that its founder, Father Edward Sorin, sought to establish a great Catholic university in America. As it says itself, "Over the years, Notre Dame has been a place where the Catholic Church could do its thinking."
Research has always been an important part of Notre Dame's academic life. The faculty's long-standing commitment to this has yielded many significant pioneers such as Professor Jerome J Green, the first American to send a wireless message. You can read about him and many other researchers here.
If American football is your thing, then the history of the Fighting Irish, which is well covered here, will fascinate you.
Cambridge University (www.cam.ac.uk) has a very drab homepage which looks like it was slapped together in a half-hour by someone who had just read a book on how to put up your own website. If you were just browsing and not looking for something specific, there is little here that would entice you to linger. The "brief history of the university" section is very good, but hard to find - it should be linked from the homepage. Cambridge needs to do better and take the Internet seriously.
