Pod casts

Greetings!

I hope everyone has recovered from the primary elections and that you all did your democratic duty and voted. It is one of the benefits of living in a democratic society that if you do your duty and vote, you have the right to complain about the outcomes. Okay, actually you have the right whether or not you voted because of the Bill of Rights, free speech and all that. What I meant to say is that I will listen to you complaints if you did your civic duty. If you didn't, you can just talk to the hand, 'cause I'm not listening. Which is a nice segue to podcasts.

I really liked some of the websites that included podcast options. Why some of the sites hardly looked like they had anything to do with a public library (high praise indeed!). I think the idea of including audio on a site is really worthwhile, especially when trying to attract teens who seem to be audiophiles by nature. I also thought the podcasts for young children were nice, but I had a couple of concerns. The narration is of a picture book, and there is no picture so the child isn't getting the advantage of seeing the words and pictures while hearing the words. If you had the book at home so that your child could look at the pictures and have the entire book experience, why not just read the story to the child so you could have an interaction around language and reading with the child instead of listening to some disembodied voice read the words? I also wondered about the legal implications of reading a work on a podcast and then "publishing" it. I believe that posting on the web is considered publishing and copyright laws may have something to say about it-- unlike the teaching / classroom exemption that a preschool story hour operates under. But then, I also worry about things legal. I was probably a lawyer in another life.

I could see using a podcasts as a way for making audio content from some programs available -- with the consent of the presenter. But Midwest weather being what it is, it would be nice to link a podcast to the library website for a program that was just presented. I particularly like the podcast "blurbs" from authors about their books and writing. I think these would be extremely popular at most public libraries. And if there was an author visit at the library, a podcast of the author's remarks would be nice to post so that those who couldn't attend could still hear the content. Adding podcast feeds to a website is easy and should probably be done. I am open to trying our own podcasts on our website as well, but I think the same caveats apply here as they do with other exciting, new technology. It has to be someone's job to know how to do it, and it has to be someone's job to keep things up-to-date.

I think podcasts are cool and should be used with just a hint of caution.

Thus spake the Bookrat!