21. Discover some useful tools for locating podcasts.
All right, on to podcasting! As I have an ipod, I’m somewhat familiar with the concept, but I rarely it for anything besides music. And it’s an ipod mini (“It’s for girls”) so it doesn’t do any of that fancy video stuff. So I searched all three of the podcast directory sites for Democracy Now!, a news radio show. On podcast.net the most recent one was from December 13, 2006. On podcast alley, I couldn’t even figure out how to listen to different shows, there was just the option to “Subscribe” or “Listen.” On Yahoo, the most recent on was September 7, 2007…better than podcast.net but still a week old…a bit too old for a news show. Then I did something crazy and went to the Democracy Now! website. There I found the option to view or listen to TODAY’S SHOW! Hmm, for news shows or anything timely, I definitely will not be using podcast directories.
Thinking about podcasting in libraries, I wanted to see what else is out there (especially podcasts that are not time-relevant) so I searched for the words public library. Some of the results were impressive, with guest speakers, poetry slams, authors, books being read aloud, and storytimes. I like all of these ideas but the storytimes. While part of the purpose of storytime is to listen to stories and do the fingerplays, there is so much more to it. There’s the socialization aspect of being around other children and adults. And while it is important to hear the stories, without seeing the accompanying illustrations, children will lose part of the story and lose the opportunity to think about the story or engage in dialogic reading and prediction. The development of print awareness skills is lessened if children do not see the book and intuit the concept of reading from left to right, both through by seeing the words and watching the action of the illustrations. Also, many of the rhymes and activities lose their basic educational influence if you can’t see the visuals than go along with the words. However, I do like the idea of having books being read aloud as podcasts, as long as the child has the book there. That idea is similar to the books with CDs that we have in the collection, which enable the child to follow along with the words on his or her own. While I think podcasting can have a place in delivering library services, I think we need to be careful of using new technologies just because we can without thinking of if these technologies alter our objectives or the outcomes.
22. Take a look at the titles available on Overdrive or Netlibrary or Project Gutenburg and learn about downloadable audiobooks.
This one I have done in order to learn about these products that we offer our customers (which translates to “I have an account but I’ve never listened to a downloaded audiobook”). Plus I can’t listen to audiobooks on my ipod, so I’m looking forward to downloading books to my new MP3 player soon! I’m so close! I find browsing a more effective searching tool in Overdrive, as there’s a good change that a specific title I’m searching for won’t be found. I was impressed with how many children’s and YA books are in Overdrive. I was also intrigued where the record says “burn to CD allowed.” I mean, once it’s burned to a CD it’s permanently yours, correct? Wow. I am going to download Feed by M.T. Anderson, in honor of all this new technology. 
With my limited experience, I like the audiobooks and have been hearing more and more positive feedback…almost shock and awe…when customers learn that we offer downloadable audiobooks and movies. Once I have my new MP3 player, I’ll do some more exploring!
