Chattahoochee Review Podcasts

Another project I've been working on lately is setting up podcasting for our literary magazine, The Chattahoochee Review. The magazine and our Writers' Institute bring a number of fairly well known authors to GPC each year so the podcasts are a great way to expand their audience and promote the magazine and future events. I had recorded a couple of their readings for our library podcast and they decided to try to offer most of their programming in podcast form. And now I'm their podcast editor.

The material that's available now consists of readings by a wide range of fiction and non-fiction writers along with a series of interviews with authors. There's some really interesting stuff including physicist Leonard Susskind, American Book Award winner Luis Alberto Urrea, and humorist/ short story writer Jack Pendarvis. Take a look if you're in the market for some literary podcasts!

The audio for most of the current podcasts was taken from video (our PR department obsessively videotapes things) but we're going to look into improving the sound quality for future recordings. And possibly videocasting too, but that will be a little bit down the road too. We decided to use libsyn for our hosting mainly due to server space issues. And hopefully they'll get a few new subscriptions out of the podcasts to cover the minimal expense. I've got a presence in the iTunes Music Store set up and am working on adding to other podcast directories to expand access.

Obviously, this is a project that I've enjoyed working on having done podcasting for our library and having a literature background, but it's also good press for the libraries. Letting your community see librarians using their skills outside of the usual environment can draw people into exploring what the library, and librarians, can offer.