OLA: Podcasting and Other Tools, Does your Information Service Deliver?

OLA Super Conference
Presenter: Doug Horne, University of Guelph

Update: Doug’s presentation is available here (ppt).

- Interested in user behaviour and how to use it for services
- syndication of info is at a pioneering stage
- it’s a fad – overblown by the media; misunderstood; content is 90% fluff; based on a cool toy.
- It’s relevant. It’s going to be something of a revolution; exciting stuff that’s happening underneath.
- Not about iPods at all; not about Apple; not about personal broadcasting;
- Why does podcasting matter? Why should it matter to libraries? It’s one example of something bigger that’s going on that’s really interesting.
- It’s the syndication that makes it simple and magical!
- RSS and XML and enclosures (the data) – what podcasting is all about.
- Podcatchers: a device to receive a podcast. iTunes is probably the major one, when they added podcasts to their system, podcasts pretty well exploded.
- Finding podcasts: iTunes, podcast alley, indiepodder.org, ipodder.org, podcast.net, etc. none of them are comprehensive, none of them are the be all and end all. You end up having to look in various places to find what you want (similar to the early days of web browsing).
- Podcast directories – reviews and tags.
- Creating podcasts: audacity is an easy application for recording and editing.
- Creating an RSS feed for podcasts: all you need to do is create an xml file. Sites out there can do this for you.
- Part of the appeal of podcasting is their low-fi nature.

Who is podcasting in the world of libraries and education?
- Many trying it out.
- Anything that makes sense as an audio file or movie clip can be turned into a podcast easily. Some public libraries are doing it for their “meet the author” events.
- Learn Out Loud – educational podcasts indexed by topic or subject.
- Duke University – well out in the lead on this. Giving away iPods and doing a lot of content too, commencement addresses, announcements, etc.
- US govt. – governments have lots to talk about so it makes sense! Including the president’s weekly radio address.
- U of Missouri: LIS school is producing them on all kinds of things
- Thomson Peterson’s – really getting into podcasting too.
- Carleton U doing lectures as video podcasts. The idea of timeshifting your education. This makes so much sense and is a great idea.
- Recap.ltd.uk – experimenting with podcasting for K-12.
- Stanford on iTunes – lectures, books & authors, music, news, etc. Anyone can subscribe.

So what’s so interesting about podcasting?
- There’s more to it than the discreet technology (it’s really not all that revolutionary).
- What’s going on that makes it so different and exciting?
- What does podcasting represent as a technology in terms of it being part of a whole suite of technology?
- Answer: web 2.0
- Yes, it’s jargon. So, let’s call it The Semantic web.
- It’s about the web getting better, smarter, about knowing who you are and what you’re looking for.
- Library 2.0 is not about changing everything. It’s about libraries doing what they do well and thinking about this new web.

The thing about this new web is that it’s all application-based.
- Aggregation
- Filters and ranking (tags)
- Syndication
- Mash-ups
- Tagging and folksonomies
- Radical trust – people become authorities because other people have decided that they know what they’re talking about
- Community-building: probably started in file sharing and peer-to-peer
- Meg Hourihan: time-shifting, time-travel, mobility, democratization, ease of production

Examples of the semantic web:
- the ones we’re familiar with: Wikipedia, del.icio.us, flickr, 43 things,
- shadows.com
- digg.com
- netvibes
- frappr
- meefedia
- amazon.com
- last.fm
- technorati
- bittorrent

Great, but what does this have to do with libraries?
- Self-publishing
- Authorities
- Open systems
- Participation
- Sharing of output
- Remixing
- Non-traditional classification
- User habits and expectations
- Value of community
- Find potential in new technologies
- Demanding that your ILS/OPAC has an API

These social tools are not about searching, they are about finding. Isn’t that what we want to happen in libraries?