The Podcast Work Group Rocks On

So far, we know that 924 people have viewed University Archives’s web video “The Birth of the Northwestern University Wildcats” since it was posted on YouTube three months ago with a link from the Library’s home page; also that 183 have watched the teaser clip for Leigh Bienen’s interview on homicide; and that 70 viewers watched Archives’s history of “The Rock” www.library.northwestern.edu/news/archives/001753.html during the first week it appeared. “There’s no doubt that there’s an audience for this kind of content,” says Multimedia Services Specialist Dan Zellner, who heads the Library’s Podcast Work Group. “It’s entertaining, in addition to being informative, and it’s coming out in a format students are very comfortable interacting with.”

Dan says NUL staff should be aware of several new and pending developments on the podcast/multimedia front that expand the Library’s options for outreach, internal communication, and education.

Branded NUL “Subchannel” on YouTube: The Library is currently working with University Relations to create an official university YouTube “channel,” similar to those being launched by other universities. “Berkeley www.youtube.com/ucberkeley is one of the best examples of this kind of thing,” Dan says. “You can customize the look-and-feel of the page to reflect the brand of your own institution, and then it offers a really easy option for distributing and viewing video content in one place.” The Library’s “subchannel” on the NU channel would include a special Archives section, for example, where videos such as The Rock, The Wildcats, and the Leigh Bienen interview would all be available in one place.

Educational/Outreach applications: Public Services worked with DMS this fall to produce a Self-Guided Audio Tour of the Library’s first floor, which Library users can take simply by checking out one of two MP3 players now available at the Circulation Desk. The Tour is also available for download as a video slideshow www.library.northwestern.edu/classes/selfguidedtour.html. “So far, it’s just the first floor,” Dan says, “but the design of it is modular, so we can add other areas in the future. It’s a really good model for educational content that departments might want to develop to explain their services to users.”

Staff Communications: Because it’s so easy to audiotape informational presentations that not all Library staff can get to, one of the first regular Podcasting activities of the Library is likely to be a regular schedule of these programs. “For example,” Dan says, “Stacey Atkins was able to record the presentation Beth Clausen and Patrick Murphy made on ‘Gaming in Libraries,’ based on a conference they’d attended. So we’ll be able to make that available to anyone on staff who would have liked to attend that presentation but couldn’t.”

The Work Group will be meeting soon to establish a schedule for regular podcast programming, beginning in the Winter semester. If you have ideas or questions about content, feel free to contact Dan Zellner (d-zellner@northwestern.edu) And of course, stay tuned…