David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Duke University and Podcasting

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OK. Duke University ISN’T podcasting lectures, but they easily could. I was reading an article about their iPod project – take a gander at this quote:

“Lori Leachman, professor of the practice of economics, records her lectures with an iPod and then posts them to a shared server. She said that in her class of 300 students, about 40 record her lectures on a daily basis.”

Hmm… mp3 files on a server… gee, what can you do with those? Maybe… aggregate them? Add an RSS feed to those posts? They’re so close. But still, even this much is close. And it’s way cool to see what Duke is doing with iPods, even though some students thought “cool. Free tunes.”

One more on Podcasting

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Greg pointed out (thanks, Greg! I’m still learning…) that I didn’t quite create a podcast – there’s one more step involved. Apparently, with Blogger (my blog is hosted on Blogger), the RSS file Blogger spews forth is missing the essential ingredient that makes true podcasting work… and that’s an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosure tags (Blogger creates Atom feeds). RSS 2.0 enclosures basically allow a file (as in mp3 file) to be attached to an RSS entry. From there, people with podcast subscription software (like iPodder) automatically get the mp3 file for his/her listening enjoyment. Cool.

Read more about all this here, here, here and here.

What the… David’s Done a Podcast!

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Welcome to the one and [probably] only podcast on Dave’s Blog. I was fiddling around with my Blogger profile, and noticed something about Audio Clips – there’s a text box named “Audio Clip URL,” and some accompanying text – “Find out how to get free Audio Clips.”

So I clicked it, and found a nifty free tool called AudioBlogger. It’s basically a fancy voice mail system – but it goes one step further. Once you’ve called the phone number and left your voice mail, Audioblogger saves your voice mail AND posts it to your blog! How cool is that?

So – this is an extremely easy way to create a podcast. No microphones, no sound editing software [and possibly nasty quality – I haven’t actually listened to it yet], no converting .wav files to .mp3 files… just call, talk, and hit the # button on your phone.

Enjoy!

this is an audio post - click to play

A Podcasting Librarian!

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Greg at open stacks just made a podcast! How cool is that? He even succinctly explains what a podcast is:

“Don’t be afraid of the word podcast; it’s just an mp3 file, as normal as can
be. However, if you’re an iPod user or have an aggregator that downloads
enclosures automatically, you might want to grab my podcast feed.”

Really, a podcast can be many things. As Greg shows, it can be basically a library conference-type presentation, or it can be a live concert recording (and many other things as well). So, how can a library use podcasting for customers? Here are some ideas:

  • local storytellers
  • teen poetry readings
  • oral histories (much better than simply storing old cassettes in boxes!)
  • My library does something called Dial-a-Story… why not “Podcast-a-Story?”
  • Ever have music in the library? We do… we could record them and podcast it…
  • How to use stuff (could be boring “click file, then click on open folder, then…”)

Just some ideas…. (now I gotta go listen to that Medeski, Martin and Wood recording of Greg’s…)