Monday 23 August 2010

Podcasting to an international audience

The Centre of South Asian Studies has published several audio and audio-visual podcasts on YouTube and, with the assistance of the University's Office of External Affairs and Communications, has also published them on the University's Video & Audio web-pages as a means of promoting our oral history and film collections. They have enabled us to reach a far larger audience than might have been possible had we only made them accessible via our own web-pages. One such example is a short documentary covering some of the linguistic highlights in the Centre's oral history collection, introduced by Mr Ivan Coleby, who digitised this collection.
For further examples, please see: http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/collection/654115

On YouTube, do see A glimpse of India, in which Dr Annamaria Motrescu and Dr Kevin Greenbank discuss the Centre's film collection and you can view highlights from our 300 amateur cinefilms.

We have been delighted by the positive feedback - do read the Comments section after you have viewed the  podcast.
Our next project is to produce a longer audio-visual piece, again with the help of the University's Office of External Affairs and Communications, which we can use at conferences and open days.  Sadly this will not be ready until October, so I will not be able to use it at this September's Open Library day. 

Podcasting has enabled us to entertain and inform audiences across the world.  It works especially well for oral and film collections, but I am considering how we might use it to promote more traditional library collections.

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