Pocasts have been used to good effect throughout this training. Doing the Discovery exercise, however, revealed that Yahoo no longer has a podcasts site and that the podcast.net link is broken. I did get through to podcastalley.com and spent some time searching, but found it hard to yield much in the way of podcasts I could easily use for free, although I did find an interesting discussion of selected science fiction titles. Reading the blogs from Montgomery participants, I discovered others having the same difficulty, so I took the suggestion of one and googled instead, using libraries and podcasts. This brought up www.libsuccess.org, a best practices wiki. From there I was able to follow links to a number of libraries using podcasts. I looked at a couple of academic libraries using podcasts for tutorials, introducing library services and procedures to students. Following the links for various public libraries, I found some using podcasts for booktalking, some for promoting library programs, some to present library programs like author talks; one presented an interview with the new library director. Not all had been kept up to date, which, as this training is proving, is one of the biggest challenges to online presentations of various kinds. Montgomery County might be able make use of podcasts on our site in the next fiscal year to explain the changes in hours and services coming with out budget cuts and also to explain the enhanced ways service will be available online and through Ask-A-Librarian. Podcasts would also be useful to promote, introduce and explain any online tutorials we decide to offer in the future, as has been discussed in the Learning Organization.
I do agree with the Montgomery blogger who felt that for teens, a presence on YouTube is probably more effective than podcasting. The RSS feed I decided to add to my bloglines account is Booktalks quick and simple by Nancy Keane, who does booktalking for K-12. I am interested in YA titles, so I will keep up with any of those she is adding.
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