Week 9 #21 - Searching and downloading a podcast

I tend to stumble across podcasts while surfing, so I haven't often done a lot of searches for podcasts. Seeing as though I have iTunes on my Mac I thought I'd download onet from there.

I did a power search and found one called Library Geeks. The following is the description I found on PodcastAlley for this episode:

"Gary Price joins Dan to discuss his work of politely getting in people's faces to share the best of what's on the web at his job at ask.com and through his other sites like ResourceShelf and Docuticker."

I hadn't come across ResourceShelf before so this was interesting. Gary said he made sure not to include the word 'library' into the blog name as this tended to scare people off. The site also goes beyond libraries. It's basically a site where Librarians and researchers share the results of web searches for information requests.

He says the number one thing to get people through the door is to show them how they can save more time. They'll come back to you for other things. He stressed that the main ingredient of a good information librarian is knowing the collection and what make one resource better than another.

Gary also urges library students to take a cataloguing course. It is still relevant. When people ask him what do we need Librarians for, we've got Google, he explains about controlled vocabulary and how this knowledge can improve your search results.

I found the interview really interesting and would probably look at the sites mentioned as well as search for other podcasts to subscribe. I would also encourage my colleagues to subscribe to library-related podcasts as this keeps them up-to-date with what's happening in the library industry.

Cheers, webgurl