Tuesday, November 18, 2008

What's with Podcasts?

Okay, I read the articles, and I subscribed to one of the podcasts. I feel that I know what a podcast is. How do you weed out the bad from the good? Who decides what's good? The problem I have with viewing the podcasts or videos or whatever you want to call them is that my computer is a tad older and things don't load very easily or quickly onto my computer. On one hand, I can see that podcasts could be great for patrons. We could have podcasts of upcoming events, and we could give "tours" around the library. But, if a computer connection is not perfect, it can create frustration for customers/patrons. Especially older ones. We can not only think of the younger ones - we'll still have the 50, 60, 70 and older somethings around for awhile and we have to think of them, too. I'm not totally enamoured with RSS yet. Talk me down!

1 comment:

Terzah said...

Podcasts are like anything else on the Internet. There's a lots of crap--but there are jewels as well. We as librarians are better equipped than most people at sorting through it all. I'm honestly not that in to podcasts, but I'm also not a big radio listener--people who listen to a lot of NPR etc. tend to like podcasts. I'm still a print girl (newspapers and blogs suit me better--maybe that's why I like RSS!).