Kankakee Public Library's Podcast: Interview with Michael Stephens

Melvin commented in the previous post that he was both "amused and impressed" by the music mashup from Vanessa and myself.

I found out from Vanessa that a few hours before she recorded the song, she'd mentioned to Melvin her intent, which she did. And within a few hours, I put up Mix 2. Maybe that's what Melvin found amusing. I wonder if Vanessa and I set some record for "fastest spontaneous mashup"?

Incidentally, our first mashup's here.

Which reminded me of this long overdue post about Kankakee Public Library using our song, White Nights, as the intro and fadeout track for their podcast interview with Michael Stephens, Instructor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University, author of Michael one of the more influential blogs on librarianship -- tametheweb.com.

It's 45-minutes long, which took me a few sessions to complete (but that's the good thing about a podcast -- I choose how much I want to listen to, long after the event).

Highlights:
3mins 50sec: Discussion on how libraries Web 2.0. concept relates to Web 2.0.

12min 30secs: Why Michael got himself into Library Science academia, and why he wants to work with librarians.

15mins 49secs: Steve said, "We ran into a few people who were a little flabbergasted that we do something like letting our staff blog".

Interesting. So even among libraries in the US, they also have the same concerns and issues about blogging as what is faced in Singapore. I thought they'd face less resistance in the US. More of this at 23mins (Stephen shares how a young librarian told him "we want to blog but we're not allowed to" or "we have a blog but we're asked to turn off the comments"). In response, Michael said he was reminded about "the famous Poop post" and that "we need to hear the human stories about the library". We trust the staff to write what they know.

18min 18secs: A discussion on whether blogs, podcasts, music-downloads, gaming etc. are a passing fad. Stephen explains that "the tools will change, but the ideas of radical trust, transparency, encouraging conversations -- those aren't going to go away". Quote from Steve: "... the cultural change is not a fad... ... the whole cultural shift of 'I have a voice, and people may or may not want to hear it' -- that's not going to change".

20mins 05 secs: Allison mentions "why staff meetings are in Kankakee", where their staff are "all fighting to talk". I guess that's why their blogging efforts works!

25 mins 20secs: Discussion on Library Marketing.

Listen to Steve Bertrand, Allison Beasley and Michael Stephens, here. Catch Kankakee Public Library's podcasts/ vodcasts on this page.

I'm a fan of Kankakee Public Library's blogs. I like what Cindy and Steve have to say on library issues (serious stuff there). But they don't crack me up as much as some of their staff. I always show people these "classics" like this and this one. : )

Why is Kankakee Public Library going into podcasting? Steve explains at this post. I feel he's nailed it with this quote: "Think globally, act locally".