Thing #21: Podcasts

I explored Podcast Alley and a couple of other directories for this exercise. To be honest, I did not find them very easy to search. I noticed that many of the search results seemed quite irrelevant for the terms I entered. One is left to click through each result to read the little blurb of description. I added three podcasts to my Bloglines account: Book Bites for Kids (interviews with children's authors), MuggleCast (devoted to all things Harry Potter), and CraftLit: Podcast for Crafters Who Love Books. All of these seemed like appropriate candidates for library purposes. I could see that podcasts could add some interesting information to a library's website, if they were made available for the public there. I could see stories being read for kids via podcasts. That would be another great use for libraries.

Some notes about podcasts: I don't think too highly of them in general as information sources. I found through my exploration that unless one can be sure that the source is authoritative, one can be left listening to the ramblings and opinions of just about anybody who knows how to podcast and who wants to share those ramblings with the world. I found that to be true with MuggleCast and CraftLit, as well as others I sampled. It is for this reason that I doubt I will use podcasts for myself very much in the future. Besides, how many people have the time to listen to these extensive ramblings???? I am coming to the conclusion that there are a lot of folks out there with way too much time on their hands--this would include both the podcasters and their listeners--I guess you could call them the "podcastees." I also found it amazing that there are SO MANY podcasts and podcasters out there. I don't think I had any idea how many there were until I explored these directories.

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs