There has been an absolute explosion of blogging happening but a big part of the change in the twin cities blogging can be tracked back to UThink, run by the University of Minnesota Libraries.
UThink is available to the faculty, staff, and students of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and is intended to support teaching and learning, scholarly communication, and individual expression for the U of M community.
UThink hosts an installation of Moveable type for bloggers, allows access to it for as long as the student is affiliated with the university and archives their posts. A browse through their blog directory and category list indicate the project has been a huge success.
source:hangingtogether.org