Podcasts

Some interesting podcasts I found among the many thousands available include those ABC National Book Reviews that are on the radio while I am at work, and the Powerhouse Museum podcasts on design of new products and ideas that spark them.

I found the hardest part even with search engines for podcasts was narrowing the many offerings down to something I would be tempted to subscribe to. There are just too many out there on any topic. Tag clouds and ways to search by subject and other parameters are most useful and badly needed in some cases.

Question: what do podcasters get out of their work other than the hope someone sees the podcast? Any way they can make money from this activity?

On libraries in an internet age I've been able to embed and so promote further to you the following offering from Christine Mackenzie (Yarra Plenty Regional Library) at the 'Broadband, libraries and the creation of Australia’s digital culture' seminar at NLA, 18 Nov 2008. Public libraries are reinventing themselves to ensure their relevance in a digital world. This presentation will describe how libraries in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands are strategically positioning themselves as places with content for information, learning, culture and as meeting places. It will also describe how Yarra Plenty Regional Library is integrating web 2.0 tools to encourage content creation as well as introducing training programs for staff, the profession and the community. such as A Taste of Web 2.0


This example shows how a conference speech or Uni lecture saved as a podcast could be shared with more than the immediate audience and opens up added online learning opportunities in a very democratic way for internet users.