Can anyone hear me?

The Orange County Library System's podcasts were well set out and easy to access. They included talks by prominent people, stories being told by their storytellers and general information about programs the library was running for teens.

I thought LibVib had some interesting  podcasts on it, but when I tried to listen to some of them they were unavailable. The podcast blurb did however link to newspaper and journal articles which I was able to go to and read. One I looked at was called "Director, Couple scuffle at library over books", and there was a video of the local news bulletin that was done on this story.

Denver Public Library podcasts had quite a few stories for kids on it ... it got me wondering about the future of Storytime if kids can listen to these podcasts at home. There were also podcasts about books and from people who had given talks at the library.

Most of the podcasts at the British Library were really long, but I finally found one on "The Holkham Bible facsimile" which only went for 9 minutes and was a really informative talk about this book.

Loved it...loved it...loved it. The ABC podcasts- I looked under Kids- RollerCasts- The Rap and found an interview with Andy Griffiths where he talks about his writing, especially his new book at the time "What Bumasaur is that?"...I found it really amusing and I think kids would too. Full text of the interview is also available on the site and I found the Book Review section really good as well.

On the Library Success Wiki, I went to the Sunnyvale Public Library-'Children's Programs' and listened to "Mother Goose Storytime for Pre-Walkers"- it went for approximately 16 minutes, you could even hear the babies crying throughout it- it reminded me so much of our Storytime sessions. I then looked at the Kankakee Public Library, there web page was a little bit too busy for me-so I had look for the podcasts. Thought I'd listen to "Arlo Guthrie and Family Podcast" but this was a little fuzzy. 

I listened to some of the podcasts on Nancy Keane's site-'Booktalks- Quick and simple', and this is exactly what they were Nancy Keane talking about the storyline of the book. The good thing was that the books were arranged by subject...this could be useful for me for choosing books for storytime...mmmm.

Podcasts could be definitely used by our Book Groups, for author talks and book reviews. We have established a Living Library at our library service and I think that podcasts would be really useful in extending this service. Interviews with older residents for local studies purposes- I seem to remember we were tape recording interviews many years ago... how much more accessible this would be for people all over the world doing genealogy. In children's services I think author interviews  and book reviews, such as those on the ABC site, would be popular. I really don't know whether I would like my storytime sessions recorded!!!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ollyhart/123420044/