23 Things Finale -- Podcasts

The final assignment for 23 Things is podcasts. I've listened to several podcasts over the years and they can be a lot of fun. I'm glad to see the VHS has also embraced this medium. With all the lectures that take place here, putting them up in digital form is a natural extension for us. We need to make sure the podcasts we create are picked up by the major podcast indexers, however. I tried to find some examples of our podcasts through podcastalley and podcast.com and didn't get a single hit for the VHS.

Some people have said they'd like to see audio podcasts of tours up. I would go further -- we need video podcasts. We should have our own channel on YouTube with a collection of short (10 minutes or so) tours of the Silver collection, the Mural Gallery, and on each section of The Story of Virginia and for Virginians at work. The curators could write the scripts and Bob could narrate them (the voice of the VHS ). The Education department has been struggling to extend services to more schools and students. Video-casting the tours and lessons would be a great way to do this. Unlike a traditional tour, they could also highlight rare and fragile items that aren't on display. We could show off all kinds of treasures. Some people might this this would discourage people from actually coming to the VHS, but I think the reverse is true. I think seeing what we have might encourage people to come if they have a chance to come to Richmond (or live here). And there's a huge audience that's interested in our collections, but live across the country and will probably never set foot in Virginia. That's an audience too, and one that can only be served digitally.

And thus endeth the lesson .

Google Docs

Google Docs looks interesting. It's certainly a boon for people who work from different locations and need to share documents. It's much easier to maintain a single document on a single site than emailing a document around to a group. I was program chair for a regional meeting a few years ago and something like this would have been handy to have.

I'm not sure how much use we'd have for this at the VHS, though. With the departmental folders on the open drive, we've taken care of this need in house. However, if we did more telecommuting, something like this would be a good option for people.

Wiki Power

Wiki's are a useful tool that can allow a resource to be built up very quickly. The VHS wiki is a great example of that. Within a week, a wonderfully rich document was created. It has the capability of being widely used and maintained, which the old intranet never was. My only complaint when I edited the STAR tips section, was it insisted it knew how the information should be formatted, and I had to wrestle with it to add the information in the way I wanted. In the end, we compromised :-) .

The most famous wiki site is, of course, Wikipedia. A lot of librarians don't care for it, but I love it. When I want quick encyclopedic information, that's my first choice now, rather than doing a Google search. I'm rarely disappointed. Wikipedia is at its best with popular culture and genealogy. I've found links to people I never expected to locate. Wikipedia is my favorite source.