Podcasting and Library PR

     I’m overwhelmed by the all of the topics that are available. Since I’m not in a regular classroom, I decided to look for a podcast that would help the library connect to the student and to the community. I think I’m on a PR campaign because I believe that libraries are taken for granted by administrators, staff, and faculty who don’t really think about what it takes to make a successful library. In this age of funding cutbacks and mass retirements, how do we reach out to our community? How do we extend our services to new faculty, staff, and administrators?      New faculty instructors participate in faculty orientation. The library portion is about 5 minutes, because everyone knows how to use a library, right? Right off the bat, these new instructors are getting the message that the library is there, so what? It takes more than 5 minutes to talk with us, get a library card, and discuss their needs and how to support their courses. There is no “assignment” for them to meet with the reference librarians, the collection development librarian, or the circulation assistant librarians who can help them with reserves and interlibrary loan.       Using podcasts may just help us with this disconnect. For the librarians, this will take time and be another commitment, but I think the results may be worth it.       I found the Dowling College Library Omnibus through one of the del.icio.us bookmarks in our key information section. The bookmark is the Education Podcast Network (EPN).  Here I located the Dowling College Library and its use of a monthly podcast of interviews, updates, and reports that encourages interaction with the college community. One podcast discussed the return of the osprey and included an interview with a local author.  What faculty member does not want to talk about him or herself? Another podcast looked at a historic site, a late 1800s mansion, on campus. It was a podcast that examined this mansion by reading emails that described personal memories, scary stories, and the use of salvaged materials from this mansion. The interview provided a historical background to one of the buildings on campus and gives students a better insight into the history of the college and the town.       So, I would take the Dowling College Library example and morph this for our purposes. We could all brainstorm a list of topics, and arrange for an interviews, and redesign our library page to include a “what’s new” box under a Flickr photo. This box would contain links to the podcast as well as to podcast tips for studying – just like the Dowling College Library.       (The links to the Dowling College Library podcast are embedded in this article)