thing #21 - Podcasts

this is where things are a little different for me. i've spent the past year at my other job (i work at Creighton's law library as the cataloging assistant as my full time job and at Metro Community College's South library in the evenings. because Metro and OPL now have a shared facility, i therefore work with OPL patrons which is how/why i'm doing this program.) trying to make some of our in-house videos and audio recordings available online to make them more convenient for our students to access (we have a limited number of copies of the videos and limited number of VCRs available in the library). for this, i spent quite a bit of time working with podcasts and streaming media. both of these are great areas for libraries to look into as it's another way for us to reach our patrons. from offering book talks to lectures to public appearances of guest speakers, there are a number of things for libraries to offer, be them academic, special or public.
but for the sake of this program, i did a search of podcasts. i found it's kind of like blogs - for me to find a podcast (or blog) i like, it's probably going to be a recommendation or link from another site. but i did do a earch for a podcast using podcastdirectory.com. I browsed through their categories and looked at a number of listings. some of the book ones looked interesting, but i could really have done with a synopsis before i start listening to them. they did have a handful of old time radio podcasts that i enjoy, but these are something that i wouldn't listen to every one of them, i'd listen only to a couple of the ones from series i like so subscribing would be inefficient.
just surfing, i downloaded a couple of podcasts and listened to the beginning of them, but didn't listen to them all - sorry, short attention-span and short on time. i do regularly download a local radio program (Todd & Tyler) and was really glad when they started providing the podcasts as i'm not always able to listen to it while they're on the air. not exactly library oriented but as i can listen to them while doing tech services work or shelving (non public service aspects of my job) it keeps me sane, so i consider them valuable for libraries, if not for them to create them, then to at least know about them to help patrons who want to use them but need help.