RCPL Tech Challenge - Podcasting

I have been purposely avoiding podcasts for a long time because I was afraid that once I started, I’d become addicted – there are so many neat things to listen to! However, for the sake of this challenge, I took the plunge – I downloaded the weekly podcast by the writers of the show Grey’s Anatomy. I have an ipod and itunes installed on my computer, but decided to do this “outside” of the ipod environment. I expect that in the future I’ll probably use my itunes account/software to manage my podcast subscriptions. It was easy – and after listening to one episode of the “behind the scenes” information about the show – I’m hooked. So then, of course, I had to look at all the various knitting podcasts that are out there. I decided to start with KnitCast, which is one of the more established knitting podcasts – you can often hear authors and knit designers being interviewed about their latest books. And again, I became hooked. Am I going to listen to podcasts in the future? Oh yeah….. .

As with most of the other technologies we’ve looked at, there are lots of ways that RCPL could use podcasting – news, events and recordings of programs, for example – but what I’d really like to see is a weekly or monthly podcast from the Youth Services staff. I’m sure there would be copyright issues, and I don’t know how difficult that would be to overcome, but I really love the idea of being able to go to the website every week and download a new podcast of a staff member reading a children’s book. If the copyright issues were too much to deal with, then a weekly podcast of a staff member TELLING a story would be neat too (we already have something similar on the website, but it doesn't change). I think it would be a new way of providing the old "dial a story" option that my library did when I was a kid.

Tech Challenge - Week Seven

The whole process was a bit more confusing that I’d expected – and I was pretty clear on how to do it. Once I’d downloaded the “Horrible Harry” book, it took a while to get it to start because I had to acquire the license - and that took a few tries. Additionally, on my computer it wanted to play on RealPlayer and not on Windows Media Player – so that was confusing too. But once I got everything to work (and it really wasn’t that bad), it was pretty neat. I wonder how much more confusing it could have/would have been if I’d tried to transfer either file to a portable device. There was a long thread on the Horizon-L listserv about how most devices are still not really designed very well - no way to bookmark your place or see where you are. The point was made that most devices are still designed for listening to music and not listening to books. I could see that as an issue.

Downloading something from Overdrive was actually much less confusing, even though I had the extra step of downloading the software first. The whole process was much more intuitive than Netlibrary. I couldn’t download any music as it was all checked out, but I downloaded the first part of the children’s book Corduroy and watched the video. It was much easier to use Overdrive’s software to download and play the file.

I can’t really see myself using this very much, but that’s mostly because I prefer the written word over the spoken word – I don’t really listen to books on cd/tape, either. I might download more juvenile videos for my daughter, thought. My husband, however, has used this service and really likes it. I could see myself listening to books on long drives once in a while, but even then, I’d probably prefer cassette tapes over anything else so that I don’t lose my place. Also, I have an ipod and the format-issues mean that there isn’t any material I can access through the library that will play on the ipod.

The obvious advantage to having this kind of service is having multiple formats of any one item – more options for patrons to use materials. And as more and more people are buying mp3 players, I think the demand for this will be high. But I do see lots of disadvantages too. The main one, as far as I’m concerned, is that all the (necessary) copyright protection will continue to make the process of downloading a book onto a portable device technologically confusing for patrons. Additionally, since every patron’s computer is different, it’s very difficult to trouble-shoot problems – and that only makes patrons more frustrated at us.