Week 5: Podcasting

Application

A fun way for teens to contribute to the library community is through sharing their opinions about what they read. For the video camera-shy, a podcast would be a cool way to participate.

Here's a sample podcast.

Podcasting as a project or program would draw young people because it's fun. We'd be providing them with a skill they could use later, and we'd be fostering creativity and the sense of self-worth kids get when adults show that they value a young person's opinion.


Backstory

It took me a while to get this to work. I need to work on my skills in the area of "read all the directions slowly and carefully." Which is ironic since that is the kind of thing I say weekly to patrons as I help them understand an online application or how to open an email accout.

Then, the staff PC in NP's lab didn't want to "see" one of the programs I needed to make all the technologies to talk to each other, so my dreams of using it as a peaceful recording studio on a Thursday morning were shattered.

I found these podcasting directions that the Web 2.o Committee suggested helpful.

The part about downlading Audacity and the LAME thing for making MP3s was the tricky part.

Many thanks to Deanna for talking me through this bit. Library Robot's blog entry on podcasting helped, too.

Now my desktop is littered with icons for programs, and I can barely remember which I used and which I didn't. . . . Which week do we study productivity??

Literacy

Yet another "read more carefully later" item on literacy from Ypulse. The line that caught my eye?

Digital media can (should?) "move learning from being 'book-centered' to being 'experience-centered,' while improving reading skills"

Speaking of Podcasts

My library school friend C interned with the librarians at NPR. I was so jealous. Turns out, she mostly did tedious work in support of the NPR audio library. (I know you're surprised: an intern doing tedious work!)

Well, C's so-so internship doesn't override my notion that NPR's librarians are probably some of the coolest in the profession. I just learned that the NPR librarians have their own blog -- and it includes podcasts from their audio archive!

Results In!

Poll Daddy has a nice feature for showing poll results to me when I am logged in, but there's no mechanism to share the chart. I had to export to Excel, make a chart, and save it as an image.

Anyway. The question was "Which patron tale of woe is hardest to smile politely through?" and those are the results.

Media Scanning

Booksfree: in the Netflix model, pay a monthly fee and have books shipped to your door. On the one hand, public libraries are free; on the other hand, Americans do hate to leave the house for services.

Barcode FAIL, via Library Stuff.

Literary gag on webcomic xkcd (a comic that I would say is often R rated+, so browse comics more knowing this).

Cool Stuff from Library Journal

LJ initiated a new rating system for public libraries, based on statistics reported to state library agencies. Learn about it, here.

You know you love "fair use" - that murky copyright law statement that says you can photocopy a couple of pages if your intentions are good. Here's an online tool to help you check your intentions.

Yay Sallie!