Friday, March 23, 2007

Thing #21: Podcasting

Something I already knew about myself was reinforced during this exercise: I'm so much more video than audio. I could waste hours on YouTube, but listening to people I don't know blather on is excrutiatingly boring. I did listen to one from http://www.podcast.net/ :
"Jenn Graham Likes Tagging; Thursday, November 16, 2006 ... This is another lunchcast from Byblos Restaurant in Getzville, New York."
[librarians at the University of Buffalo talking about a trip to a local ACRL meeting at the time of the Great October Blizzard...nostalgia for me. I got my BA at UB. I remember blizzards. Not fondly.]

From
http://podcastalley.com/
Couldn't stand to listen to another podcast, but noticed an interesting difference in these 2 sites. Top 10 podcasts in the latter include 2 about Harry Potter and one called "Blast the Right." The former lists top 10 tags (not podcasts) but 2 of the 10 are "christian" and "jesus." Something tells me each one has different audience.

Tried "libraries" as a keyword in all 3 and got different results. More overlap in the 1st two than either had with
http://podcasts.yahoo.com/.

Did manage to add a podcast to my Blogroll--sure hope it works. I'm hoping something called "Crystal Clear Tolkien" won't bore me stiff.

I'm not dissing podcasts, just making it clear that different things work for different people. I think a podcast is best used as an adjunct to something else--narration for something visual; (like a PowerPoint or library art tour). Otherwise I suggest shorter is better, and that one should think long and hard about whether a purely audio medium is the best way to convey what one wishes to convey.

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