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Lea worcester

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Podcasting in Libraries

After inventing the phonograph, Thomas Edison wrote that the possibilities for it were "so illimitable and the possibilities so numerous that he [the author] . . . is himself in a somewhat chaotic condition of mind" (1878, 527). It is important to remind ourselves that new technology has always opened up new opportunities. It remains for society and ourselves to fully explore them when they appear.

About Podcasting

  • combination of the word broadcasting and the name of a popular MP3 player, iPod, by Apple
  • term is rapidly evolving and can mean:
a. audio file automatically delivered directly to the listener's device using the XML-based file format RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and a feed reader
b. any audio (and increasingly video) file that the listener downloads and plays on a digital player

Why Create Podcasts?

  • communicate with faculty, students, library professionals
  • promote successful learning outcomes for Net Generation and next generation of learners
  • relatively easy and cheap to produce
  • integrate into overall web presence
  • few FCC restrictions on podcasts

Points to Consider

  • users must have sufficient bandwidth to download
  • most podcasts are amateur productions and lack audio quality
  • staff and faculty often need training and easy to use technology
  • hearing impaired cannot use this communication channel
  • asynchronous communication does not allow interaction or participation

What's in it for us?

  • opportunities for collaboration
  • faculty - audio-publish faculty work and presentations
  • departments - course content
  • students - audio-publish student work and commentary
  • reviews of books and resources completed in course work
  • informal student commentary and reviews of library resources
  • K 12 community - student and teacher resources
  • Snacks4theBrain!, Vanderbilt University Center for Science Outreach - outlines interesting work done by members of the university with resource for K 12 teachers. http://snacks4thebrain.blogspot.com/
  • local community
  • podcasts of events of interest to both academic and local community (ex. events for joint One Book, One Community projects)
  • attract student attention with news and entertainment
  • newsletter with events, hours, etc.
  • public domain publications and modern works (with permission)
  • 24/7 tours
  • expand information literacy/bibliographic instruction programs
  • promote books with audio reviews

Why Listen?

  • information of interest to library staff
  • virtually attend conferences and workshops
  • Understand podcasting in order to answer questions from students

Interested?

  • find podcasts
  • directories
  • search for sites individually on the Internet
  • download
  • subscribe using software
  • visit sites and click on audio links
  • explore
  • explore the resources listed on this web page to find out ways that you can use podcasting in your library

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Podcasting: Exploring the Possibilities for Libraries created for the 2007 Texas Library Association Conference in San Antonio, TX.


Folksonomy: In your own words

Folksonomy is a word that combines folk (Old English word for people) and taxonomy (Greek for classification management) and is used to describe the on-the-fly classifications (tags) that Internet users add to objects online using social bookmarking tools. Literally translated, folksonomy means people's classification management.

Pros and cons

Features in the social bookmarking tools described below help people to collaborate and build communities through creating and sharing their tags online. Training is unnecessary and users can immediately participate using their own terms and concepts. There is a social benefit to participating in tagging because users contribute tags to objects and benefit from each other's work. Advocates maintain that without such informal methods of tagging, many items on the Internet would remain unidentified.

Increased public and commercial use of such services has suggested to some that the librarian's role in information organization is unnecessary. However, user-based classification systems have several important shortcomings. Without controlled vocabulary it is difficult to find relevant items. Tags are ambiguous and there is no control for acronyms and synonyms. Different users apply the same term in multiple ways. A quick search for cat will retrieve images and links to the animal cat as well as links to sites for the acronym CAT. User-based classification systems are flat without parent-child relationships, categories or subcategories. They lack hierarchy, a distinguishing trait of traditional taxonomies, which provide a more robust classification of objects. Overall, it is difficult to find specific, accurate information using folksonomy.1

Many argue that social bookmarking tools offer librarians an opportunity to offer services in ways that were impossible before. First, techno-savvy librarians can help patrons share the materials they have. In addition to offering computers and multimedia software with technical support in how to use it, we can help users label and organize their items. Suggested projects include helping families and local historians identify and label old family photos, scrapbooks, and other materials.2 Second, we can use the new tools to offer services. La Grange Park Public Library <http://www.lplibrary.org/>, Albany County Public Library <http://acpl.lib.wy.us/>, St. Joseph County Public Library <http://www.libraryforlife.org/> , and Rutland Free Library <http://www.rutlandfree.org/> use Flickr to display images. The University of Pennsylvania library <http://www.library.upenn.edu/> created their own tagging system based on del.icio.us software that enables users to tag web sites and library cataloging records.3 Finally, social bookmarking tools enable libraries to offer what is perhaps our most valuable resource, a place where people can collaborate and build community.

Social bookmarking tools

There are many bookmarking tools that offer some kind of tagging or rating element and facilitate a grassroots community classification of digital assets. This article will only discuss a small number of the free services currently available online.

1. Connotea

<http://www.connotea.org> Created and run by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) the service is a free online reference management service for scientists. Connotea helps users store their reference list online, which means that it's readily accessible, it's linked directly into the literature and it's easily shared with colleagues.

2. Del.icio.us

<http://del.icio.us> One of the first tools that allowed users to add sites to a personal collection of links, categorize them with tags (keywords), and share the list with others online.

3. Flickr

<http://www.flickr.com> Recently acquired by Yahoo! Inc. Flickr offers a free service for people that want to share and organize their digital photos. Users upload images from computers, cameras, camera phones, add descriptive tags, create photosets, and determine who has access to them. The difference between the photos placed on Flickr and those on a standard Web page is that others can add comments, notes and tags.


Other applications use the content and tags in Flickr to offer visitors access to photos.
Airtight Interactive tag browser <http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/> User's type in a search tag and retrieve a grid of photos and dynamic list of related terms.
Mappr <http://mappr.stamen.com/mappr.phtml.> Displays small images from searches on a map of the United States.

4. StumbleUpon

<http://www.stumbleupon.com/> Users rate website quality to form collaborative opinions. Viewers see pages which friends and like-minded stumbles have given a thumbs-up.

User-based classification systems offer both the public and librarians an opportunity to provide meaning and to an increasingly chaotic Internet.


Lea Worcester

Sources

1. Janes, Joseph. December 2005. All in the Family. American Libraries: 60.

2. Kroski, Ellyssa. 2005. The Hive Mind: Folksonomies and User-based Tagging. <http://infotangle.blogsome.com/2005/12/07/the-hive-mind-folksonomies-and-user-based-tagging/>

3. Ibid.

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