Finding and listening to podcasts is a simple process. Finding regularly-updated podcasts is a different story. Many of the ones I discovered during this Library Learning lesson hadn't been updated in the last year. It reminded me of a couple of weekend movie box office sites I used to have links to in Explorer- at the time I deleted the links, both sites hadn't been updated in two years! There is no end to the number of dead pages on servers around the world, and depending on your search terms, this is also true of podcasts. Why bother linking to a science tech review podcast that hasn't been updated in two years?
Luckily, there are still plenty of current ones out there. Of the three search engines used during this lesson, Yahoo! Podcasts seemed to give me the simplest, most current results, with visual style. Then again, this could have something to do with the odd searching I did. My Bloglines account now has feeds from Geek Speak Radio and The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas. It's best not to ask.
In a library setting, podcasting makes as much sense as embedded video. We could have anything from a book recommendation corner to children's stories in streaming format on our site- all recorded by staff. Interactivity is the key, and this would be a simple way to make a personal connection with our patrons.
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