Week 9 - podcasts - discover & explore

Podcasting opens up such a new world.
I enjoyed the podcasts from the Library Success wiki - Book Talks Plain & Simple - and could immediately see their use in a Public Library for all those RA questions when someone wants to know about a book. This quick little snippet/blurb neatly entraps you to want to listen to the rest of the book and you are left with the author/title info so you can immediately rush out and reserve the book.
What would be really good is a link to the podcast from within the library catalogue so that for every podcasted title you can listen to the blurb and decide from that (as well as cover info if you've got Syndetics) whether or not you want to borrow/reserve the item - you can do this at home, in the library, anywhere and everywhere - you don't have to have th eitem in your hand reading the blurb itself to decide what you think.
As an aside this could then reduce the size of bib records because you wouldn't need to add the blurb onto the record, just the podcast link. For the hearing impaired the transcript of the podcast could be linked to the record also reducing the size of the bib record (I personally find long detailed narrative descriptions within bib records to be highly annoying).
And the best thing? To have these podcasts available for download through Libraries Australia as an intrinsic cataloguing function - that way everyone gets to share.

The podcasts from ABC Radio National mean that if you miss a show or discussion down the street a few weeks later someone talks about "oh yes, I heard this on the radio and they said ............" you can go back and find it and listen to it. If you missed it on the day it doesn't mean you've missed it forever and it's so much nicer than reading the transcript which doesn't have the same feel as listening to the show "live".

What other benefits does podcasting have for libraries? Author talks - up there and available within days/hours/minutes/live! Combined with vodcasts this is such a huge area for expansion. I know some libraries are already doing and loading visuals to YouTube etc., this is certainly an area where we can expand, grow, learn, and develop some real skill and professionalism - beyonmd the home-movie feel.