The absolutely standout, rush-home-and-start-doing-it-myself session from today was Jody Atkinson and Sonja Olsen’s talk on podcasting information literacy tutorials at Curtin Library. (Thanks to everyone who counselled me to go!) As an initiative it certainly passes the is it cheap?/is it easy?/is it worth it? trifecta of important questions to ask whenever starting a new endeavor. Eight months later, more than 5,500 downloads of their podcasts have been initiated by students, with some months registering more than 1,000 downloads of podcasts. The secret of their strategy seems to be:
• offering new podcasts every week, thus keeping it fresh and new;
• offering podcasts on useful, practical topics such as library tours (brilliant use of the technology!) and guides to referencing;
• creating not overly complicated podcasts, keeping them under 5 minutes in length, which meant not too much time was spent on each one, therefore maximizing resources and keeping momentum going.
Their paper was jam-packed with lots of practical advice – I’ll forward more detailed notes when I get back to Sydney.
The morning sessions I attended were largely about opac usage. As Tom has covered those sessions I’ll keep my comments brief. The most interesting point for me was something I have suspected for a long time –students find our opacs very hard to use. This seems to be due to a number of factors, including students’ reluctance to change any default settings or to read help screens. Unsurprising stuff, really, considering what google looks like.
Another interesting afternoon session was the “SMS a librarian” service that Southbank Tafe offers. A very interesting and effective service that has been particularly adopted by their young, international, and hearing-impaired students.
So it’s been a tech-heavy day here in Perth. I expect it will continue tomorrow, with papers on wikis, blogs, and of course our very own Sten’s talk on the Sydney eScholarship repository.
Here’s my question of the day: should I go to a session on Libraries Australia and Picture Australia (Tom Boston, National Library), or should I go to a talk about evaluating information architecture of Australian library web sites (Philip Hider, Charles Sturt)?
Comments
Could our Curtin colleagues provide any further breakdown on their podcasts? ie which ones where the most popular? Do they think that the popularity was related to the time of year or the actual content eg the exams podcast is number one at exam time etc
Do they know whether the students are downloading the podcasts onto MP3 players or to their/librar/uni computers?
A great tip to keep them short and sharp!
Posted by: Libby | September 22, 2006 01:26 PM
Thanks for the comments Libby - I'll ask the Curtin people at lunchtime. Interestingly, they did note that there was hardly a drop in interest during the semester breaks. Even though students were no longer studying, they were still listening to the library podcasts!
Posted by: Sarah | September 22, 2006 02:18 PM
Hi Libby
As requested here is a further breakdown of our podcast statistics. It is hard to say whether it is the time of year or the content that makes each one so popular however as you can see from the stats below the exam podcast was not the most popular at exam time (June) in fact there were more downloads of the exam podcast in August which is the start of semester. As Sarah mentioned, we were also very surprised to see that the popularity of our podcasts did not drop significantly during the semester break (July).
Library Audio Tour: Feb=91 Mar=111 Apr=89 May=95 Jun=82 Jul=76 Aug=88 Sep=33 Total=665
ID Number and Password: Feb=14 Mar=81 Apr=67 May=69 Jun=43 Jul=40 Aug=50 Sep=26 Total=389
Borrowing: Mar=76 Apr=76 May=117 Jun=59 Jul=50 Aug=48 Sep=28 Total=453
Off Campus Library Service: Mar=52 Apr=61 May=62 Jun=44 Jul=42 Aug=48 Sep=56 Total=364
Ways to Contact Us: Mar=40 Apr=58 May=59 Jun=44 Jul=40 Aug=47 Sep=20 Total=307
Databases: Mar=28 Apr=92 May=88 Jun=50 Jul=52 Aug=46 Sep=23 Total=378
Gecko: Apr=83 May=79 Jun=47 Jul=42 Aug=50 Sep=24 Total=324
Referencing: Apr=51 May=85 Jun=47 Jul=48 Aug=55 Sep=70 Total=355
EndNote: Apr=38 May=93 Jun=56 Jul=52 Aug=55 Sep=29 Total=322
Websearching: Apr=40 May=83 Jun=41 Jul=54 Aug=50 Sep=93 Total=360
Frequently Asked Questions: May=104 Jun=43 Jul=42 Aug=51 Sep=21 Total=260
Handy Reference Resources: May=64 Jun=40 Jul=47 Aug=52 Sep=66 Total=269
Hansard, Bills and Acts: May=47 Jun=43 Jul=43 Aug=46 Sep=21 Total=200
View-it Tutorials: May=36 Jun=52 Jul=42 Aug=69 Sep=27 Total=226
Exams: May=14 Jun=57 Jul=43 Aug=66 Sep=24 Total=204
Best resources on webpage: Aug=51 Sep=21 Total=72
Business Resources: Aug=75 Sep=67 Total=142
Health Resources: Aug=65 Sep=22 Total=87
Humanities Resources: Aug=42 Sep=27 Total=69
Science Resources: Aug=26 Sep=30 Total=56
Resources and Environment: Sep=26 Total=26
Access Problems: Sep=65 Total=65
Keeping up to date: Sep=68 Total=68
Totals: Feb=105 Mar=388 Apr=655 May=1095 Jun=748 Jul=713 Aug=1080 Sep=887 Total=5671
(Note: September stats are only up to 20th September)
We are actually able to obtain statistics on where these podcasts are being downloaded ie: in the library, at Curtin or off campus but as yet we haven’t retrieved these (we had some problems earlier in the year which has compromised the machine we use for this). We hope we will be able to do this soon. Our guess would be that if students are using MP3 players, they will mostly be loading the podcasts at home, since the library doesn’t have iTunes or other MP3 player software on our computers – many MP3 players will only load stuff via their software.
We don’t know as yet whether the students are downloading these podcasts onto their MP3 players or their PCs (and if so whether this is in the library or at home) however we have recently posted a feedback form onto our podcast page which asks these questions. You can see it at: http://library.curtin.edu.au/podcast/index.html. Next semester we will consider giving away some itunes vouchers to encourage students to fill in this form.
I hope these answer your questions!
Jaya Berk
Posted by: Jaya Berk | September 28, 2006 11:13 AM