Podcasts don't wow me. They've obviously got their place but I won't be hunting them down with any great regularity. As I said in my post about Thing 7, I am much more interested in Serial.
I tried to listen to episode 1 in bed before going to sleep one night. You might think that given the subject material of Serial, that I didn't sleep very well. On the contrary....I slept too well. I fell asleep before the episode had even finished so that wasn't much good. I'm much better listening to the podcast when I'm standing up (less chance of falling asleep) so now I listen when I do my ironing. I do my ironing on a weekly basis, and it usually lasts an hour - so perfect for listening to the Serial podcast and enough to keep the suspense building during the week. I actually look forward to ironing now.
On a different note and a more library-related note, as the new academic term approaches, we always start thinking about ways to embrace new students - to make them feel welcome and comfortable in approaching us for help, but also enabling them to be independent users of the library. Perhaps a podcast tour of the library would be one way to do this. There are lots of things to think about before doing this:
- How do we do this?
- What do we want to say?
- Who will say it? (lets face it, there are very few of us who like listening to our voices on playback)
- Will it be used?
- Do we have to lend technology to the library user? For example ipods? Or do we rely on them using their own devices?
- Can it be incorporated with the use of QR codes?
- Do we want to do this, and more importantly do our users want us to do this?
There are, I'm sure, plenty of other questions to consider and 2-3 weeks before the start of term is not the time to be voicing them. This is something that would need to be raised at the end of the academic term in May/June, with a lot of work happening over the summer months. I think that users would also need to be asked whether they would find it useful - perhaps international students might find it particularly of assistance especially if it could be produced in other languages. But is it worth the effort if no-one uses it? Have students already moved onto something else while the library and librarians are still playing catch-up? I'd be interested to hear how other libraries have incorporated podcasts into their building/collections/services. Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction for an enlightening podcast...
I don't think you need to worry about having to lend technology, with even the most rudimentary phones these days capable of MP3 playback. Last year I stood in front of 180 of our new 11 year old students and asked them to put their hands up if they had a mobile phone. 180 hands went up. I asked them to keep their hands up if their phone had a connection to the internet. 3 hands went down.
ReplyDeleteFor an academic library one would assume that the delivery platform for the podcast would be through the institution's VLE or Learning Platform. Lots of possibilities though...
I do think it would be interesting to try, there may be students out there who really would prefer to do a tour on their own, rather than in a group, say.
ReplyDeleteReading around other peoples' posts about this Thing, there is definitely a lot of squeamishness about hearing the sound of one's own voice! But I reckon every library has a person or two who isn't too put off by it. But maybe I'm wrong!
Great reflection, thanks. #rudai23