"I hear a sound, a sound above my head" (Doves; Song: Kingdom of Rust; Album: Kingdom of Rust)

I've no idea why I haven't used podcasts a lot up until now. There are radio programmes that I enjoy but if I happen to be out and miss them, then I just miss them. So in the same way as I view the majority of my tv programmes when I want to watch them via Virgin on Demand or on-line, I hadn't really considered doing the same for radio programmes. So I really enjoyed this weeks task of getting to grips with them and exploring all the types of podcasts that are out there.

I eased myself in gently by subscribing to an RSS feed of the podcasts of the Jonathan Ross show on Radio 2 as we listen to that every Saturday morning if we can. I then found a Claudia Winkleman Arts show that looked interesting sosubscribed to that as well. We recently went to see the comedian Dave Gorman at the New Theatre and hasn't realised that he had a radio show until we went, so I searched for that online and listened and subscribed to the podcasts for that. So now I will have all these new podcasts to listen to (if I find the time!) and like the idea of downloading them to my ipod so I can listen to them on the go or even on long car journeys. I did have quick look on the podcast.com site where that are 1000's of podcasts, so I'll have to explore that a bit more and find other things I'm interested in listening to.

Last years library trainees here at SSL created a podcast for a tour of our library as their final end of year project. This was then made available via our website and also downloading on to some MP3 players we purchased which readers could borrow and do a self guided tour. We felt this would be useful at the start of MT for new students that were unable to attend the library induction and also thought out the year for visitors to the library. The only problem is that we've had such a lot of changes recently in the library that the content already needs updating. It would be interesting to explore though other uses for podcasts in a library context in the future.

"Watched tv, laid awake all night" (Barenaked Ladies; Song: What a Good Boy; Album: Gordon)

YouTube is one web 2.0 tool that I use alot. My brother is constantly sending me links to funny clips etc. I also use it for viewing trailers for films I might be interested in, and looking for videos from music concerts I've been to, among many other things. There is so much on there and I can happily spend an hour looking for videos that I might be interested in.

At the moment I am taking a night school course in pottery, so I searched YouTube for some demonstrations of people throwing pots on a wheel; they make it look so easy!

I hadn't used the Channels section before and I'll definitely use it again for searching for topics of interest. I had a look at the kind of videos that had been loaded against Oxford University, there were 100's of videos on there ranging from films of matriculation at the Sheldonian, interviews with students to videos of formal dinners at colleges. Alot of these would really be of interest if you were thinking of applying for the University and wanted to see more about what student life would be like. The demonstrations of e-resources were also useful and could easily be built in with links from library webpages to assist students with using them.