Every so often people ask me about what podcasts I listen to, and every so often I start listening to something new and get terribly excited about it and have to tell my colleagues all about it. Also, this past semester I taught my first course. It was an LIS course entitled, "Introduction to Technology." Instead of the normal plethora of weekly readings, I toned the readings down a little bit, and added a few podcasts as "suggested listening" for learning experiment. It went over well, so I figured I post something about my favourites, why I like them, and why I think they are relevant. I'm sticking to podcasts that tie into my profession - FilmJunk, Quirks and Quarks, and Linux Outlaws, not this time. If you have any recommendations, please share!
Digital Campus - "A biweekly discussion of how digital media and technology are affecting learning, teaching, and scholarship at colleges, universities, libraries, and museums." I stumbled across this podcast late last spring, and have been an eager listener every other week. The podcast is in a way an extension of the work being done at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and moreover, it is an excellent source of information regarding projects and trends in the digital humanities. At MPOW we are currently in the infant stages of creating a digital scholarship centre that is going to be integrated with our library, so the podcast is a great way to stay fresh with what is going on in digital humanites.
The Changelog - is a weekly podcast that covers new open source software projects. I constantly find myself a little lost with the many different open source projects and trends. This podcast allows me to listen to an episode on specific project so I can learn more about it. Sometimes it is exactly what I need, other times it is over my head, but hey, that happens.
This Week in Law - is a weekly podcast on the TWiT network hosted by Denise Howell and a panel which covers new issuses in technology law. Before I entered the library profession, I had intended on becoming a lawyer. Well, we all see how that went. But, I never lost interest in law, or issues that have always interested me. This podcast, along with the next, allow me to keep up and stay fresh.
Free as in Freedom (previously, The Software Freedom Law Center podcast) - is a biweekly podcast featuring Bradley Kuhn and Karen Sandler covering legal issues and topics in the open source and free software world. This podcast again appeals to the legal issues sides of me, but more so in so far that it deals mainly with legal issues around open source and free software. Dan Scott tipped me off to the podcast one day, and I have been a regular listener ever since.
The Command Line - is a weekly podcast consisting of a news episode, what the host Thomas Gideon calls a rant episode which is more or less an essay on a given topic, and the occasional interview.
JISC - is an intermittent podcast put out by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) touching on new issues and trends in library and information science.
CBC Spark - is a combination of a weekly podcast, radio show and blog which centres around technology and culture, and is hosted by Nora Young. The show occasionally crosses over into information science territory, but I listen to it more so for the interesting topics each week.
TVO Search Engine - is a weekly podcast hosted by Jesse Brown which explores the Internet and technology's impact on culture and politics. This is one of my absolute favourite podcasts, and an interesting take on journalism in my opinion.
