Podcasts

Of all of the topics in the course so far, this is probably the nearest and dearest to my heart. To pass the time during my 2 hour commute each day I make liberal use of podcasts.

I use ITunes to sync the podcasts directly to my phone, but before that I would download the files in ITunes then drag and drop them onto my MP3 player. Once you get used to it it's pretty easy to do and it's well worth the few minutes that it takes to put new ones on there.

Every once in a while I'll venture out and try a new podcast but for the most part I have my set standards that I listen to and enjoy. They fall neatly into the categories of tech, comedy, music and sport. One interesting thing about podcasts is the cross-pollination that can happen. Most of the podcasts that I listen to have guests. Occasionally these guests have also had podcasts, and I've stumbled onto some great ones that way.

Another good way of discovering podcasts is to use a podcast directory and look for highly-rated ones in topics that interest you. I use ITunes for this but it looks like you'd find good stuff from the other podcast directory services listed in this lesson as well. Here's one that's put out by a reference librarian.

The podcasts that I'm listening to at the moment include This Week in Tech, The Adam Carolla Podcast (definitely not safe for work!) and the Onion Radio news (also not safe for work). In the past I've also listened to music podcasts which played songs from new artists and also watched a video podcast that produced photoshop tutorials. It seems that there's a podcast for almost everyone and covering almost every subject.

I think the world of podcasting could be useful for libraries. A topical library could record a podcast on different topics serviced by the library, or it could be as simple as researching different podcasts that others have created on the topic and linking to them from their library website.