Our Content, Their Device: Three Uses of the iPod – Sarah G. Wenzel, Columbia University
The librarians at Columbia University have developed library content that can be used on an iPod.
They created a call number guide (visual) that can be downloaded on an iPod. They made downloadable map photos of the stacks available. To explain how to use it, they used documentation from the iPod Subway Guide to explain how to download the resources onto the iPod.
They dod an audiovisual tour of the Starr East Asian Library in several asian languages. While some iPods can play the audio and show the pictures synced with it, others could only allow the audio to be played.
They also record talks with library-related speakers and speakers from friends of the library and made them available for download.
For tech, they used a portable digital recorder and Garage Band or WavePad. The podcasts take up a lot of server space and some libraries may want a dedicated media server to stream audio.
The project is just in its infancy so they don’t have stats yet. They are considering using podcasts for instruction as well.
Audio to Go – Podcasting @ WPI – Christine Drew, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
WPI has 50 academic programs (grad and undergrad) and 4000 students.
They have done a few podcast series:
Library Wisdom Series – Started in August of ’05. Short weekly segments of information sources and search techniques. Podcasts are brief, factual and friendly. You really get a sense of Christine’s personality in it.
Two Towers – History of the Worcester Tower. Got people to read chapters from the book, from campus police to the library director to students. It built a sense of community and awareness.
Lending iPods – as part of Audio to Go, they lend out iPods to borrow and downloadable audiobooks.
Tech – Christine uses a $90 headset, but also has a 20 GB iPod with a Griffin Talk device (doesn’t work as well). They record using Audacity and the LAME encoder. They created their own feed by hand and tested it using various feed readers. Each Library Wisdom talk takes 30-60 minutes to create and make available.
They did marketing via the Website, posters and word of mouth.
They’ve so far had more than 3000 downloads of their MP3 files. Nice!
