Podcasts

I started off this exploration of podcasts by going to Podcast Alley. When I 1st decided on a particular podcast to try out, it took me to a place where I could download a podcast feed, which seems to be like an RSS feed for audio. Since I don't have an MP3 player, and don't plan on downloading enough podcasts for me to need a program to manage them all, I went on without downloading a program. I still hadn't listened to one from this exploration, though.

Then I found that I could copy a link to a podcasting site from my Google reader. Cool! I found one that sounded library-related, loaded it into my reader, and found that all it really was, was a blog. Delete.

The next one I found ended up being really interesting. It was an audiobook about a time-traveling librarian being published in serial form by Podiobooks. I could listen to it straight through my reader, and actually sounded interesting enough that if I did have an MP3 player, I would be interested in downloading it on a regular basis to listen to where ever I happened to be.

Finally, I found a library in Sunnyvale, CA that does podcasts of many of its programs, including a puppet performance of "Peter and the wolf", several business research programs, and a bi-lingual Russian/English storytime. I could listen to the straight audio podcasts from the Reader itself, but they also offered videos, where I had to click through to the site to get. From there I could also access an audio-only version.

If Sno-Isle were to think about doing regular podcasts of its programs, we would need to invest in recording equipment, and librarians in the system would need to be willing to get, setup, and run the equipment for the programs they wanted to post. Considering the resistance to mere blogging in our branch alone, I would anticipate even more resistance to this extra effort. If someone wanted to champion an effort in this area, they should investigate how much traffic a site such as Sunnyvale's gets. I know that we already do podcasts of children's librarians reading picture books, and if we already get lots of traffic it would be a good place to gradually expand our offerings to events.