Thing 21: Podcasts

Podcasts work very well for audio focused people.

I randomly selected a podcast that was not a storytelling podcast. I found Stephen Bell’s podcast from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This was found from http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Podcasting . Mr. Bell believes that part of the future of libraries will result from relationships with our patrons and an embrace of technology as a librarian entrepreneur (which is his term for being creative with new ideas and technologies.)

To have more of a meta intake, I selected a podcast from the Library at Mohawk College and their explanation of how they moved from video to dvd to now using Podcasts. This was found from the http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Podcasting link on 23 Things. Unfortunately, it seems that many of the podcasts are now offline, which could say a few things about podcasting in general. First, while it is a new and exciting way to communicate with the public, a few of the libraries in the links no longer link their podcasts, which tells us that there is not much demand and use of them, or that it may be too hard and expensive to maintain them.

My take is that it is literally something that someone could use more as an MP3 or something on an IPod, which is literally what we are calling it. General internet use is unlikely though if you can maintain a steady supply of your local library patrons attention to it, it could be very helpful and informative. I think that the most helpful podcasts will be those tailored to the patrons of a particular library. It would not be often that someone had the urge to simply go to look at Denver Public Library’s podcasts unless they were very publicly well known. Podcasts would not be helpful to our patrons simply because many do not have access to a computer and have no need to listen to anything other than their music. If they were to listen to podcasts, it would have to be about videos they could watch in Youtube or games they could play on the computer. Job search podcasts could be of help, but usually people needing help with job search around us can barely use a computer much less know what a podcast is.

I generally think podcasts or something like it could be the wave of the distant future for us due to our patrons technological ability and attention span. Currently, it won’t be used, but in the future when our patrons have more access to computers and IPods and more, it could start being used especially if it gives a guided tour of the library and is automatically downloaded etc.

Naturally the hyperlinking does not work yet again. Can't edit, can't fix it. It simply pastes the code into the text so here once again are all the links.

http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Podcasting - was used to find the links
http://braincast.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=225810 - Mohawk College Library Podcast
http://library.uncg.edu/depts/ref/podcasts/mp3/PW26_bell.mp3 - Stephen Bell's podcast