Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Podcasting

     As soon as Eric came on board with me at the David A. Howe Public Library, I wanted to start up a podcast.  I knew he'd know how to do it and I thought it would be super fun.  He started in March of 2015 and it took us a few months to get it started.  All the Books aired it's first episode in August of 2015.  
     The format consists primarily of us talking about books we've read recently, followed by talk of new releases, discussing the NY Times Bestseller list, library news and a rotating segment.  We started with a Lonely Hearts Book Club selection, choosing Thinning the Turkey Herd by Robert Campbell in our inaugural episode.  In this segment, I choose a book from the stacks that has never circulated and we try to figure out what the problem was.  It's become one of our favorite segments.  Others include author and subject spotlights, giving first lines of classics and reading negative reviews of highly regarded books.  When we started we would record and Eric would edit the episode to streamline things and get the timing right.  Then once out of necessity we had to record and post right away with no time to edit.  We liked the energy that that brought and since then have left the episodes uncut (with a few exceptions.)  I think we've managed to find a pretty good audience and we even air weekly on the Angelica Radio Station.  Since we began there has been an episode every single week.  We most recently wrapped episode 31, a spotlight on Superman, just in time for the movie Batman V Superman to hit theaters.
    The podcast is a win-win because it's a popular program at the library, and it's something we look forward to every week.