Yesterday, a few posts sprung up noting that archived SirsiDynix Institute programs were now available as mp3s, but mislabeled as podcasts. No fear. Problem solved.

Now introducing the official SirsiDynix Institute podcast feed! For those of you who use iTunes as your podcatcher, here’s a 1-click button: .

Not familiar with the Institute?

“The SirsiDynix Institute is an ongoing forum for professional development in the library community. By providing free access to industry-leading speakers and events, our mission is to support librarianship and advance the work of librarians around the world.

Attend our free Web seminars as the SirsiDynix Institute presents compelling speakers selected from among leaders in librarianship and information technology.”

If you’ve never been exposed to this series, the SirsiDynix Institute really has a great series of speakers and offering them in podcast form is a great way to get those programs to more people. The last three programs are already available via the feed.

Next up in the series? Me! And then me again!

Disclaimer: I have done some work for SirsiDynix on this project. You just might recognize the voice.

Steven Cohen invites you over to his blog to visit the Carnival of the Infosciences #34. I can’t imagine why I never submitted any of my posts over at the Second Life Library 2.0 blog from this past week. Probably because I haven’t left Second Life long enough to think of things like that. Warning: If you are thinking about checking out Second Life, it is a big, wonderful vacuum for your time.

Next week’s Carnival will be at blogwithoutalibrary.net. Send submissions to amanda AT blogwithoutalibrary.net.

A few things I’d love to talk about in greater detail, but can’t seem to find the time:

Podcasting 101 for K-12 Librarians

New podcasting wiki from Infopeople

A Podcasting Market Update, courtesy of Feedburner.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever highlighted Check It Out, described as “Library news, author chats and “Good Reads” book reviews with librarian Phil Sheridan. In association with the Board of Library Trustees and the Sausalito Public Library.” Here’s the podcast feed.

Why can’t I find the time? New obsession.

Another Monday, another Carnival, this time courtesy of my buddy Charlton Braganza over at ReferenceWORK. This week’s Carnival even features me drooling. Read for yourself.

Next week’s the Carnival returns to Library Stuff, where Steven will enter the revered ranks of the three-time host. Since he hasn’t posted yet, why not use his contact form for your submissions?

I was looking through my referrals this morning and came across a link from Podscope. The person had done a search for “technology and libraries” and Open Stacks #18 produced the only result. The apparent problem with this search is the presumption that this search tool operates in a Boolean manner. It does not.

Podscope is, at present, only capable of searching for words/phrases. It just so happens that I actually say “technology and libraries” in Open Stacks #18, so this searcher got a hit on their search. But I can’t imagine that they were actually looking for someone to explicitly say those words in that order. Maybe I’m wrong.

A quick look at the FAQ reveals the following:

My complex search isn’t returning any results. What’s going on?
Supporting complex boolean searches is tricky when dealing with audio files. We do plan on providing boolean search capabilities, but we want some community feedback on how it should behave.

I don’t see why Podscope would think Boolean is tricky. Once you’ve transcribed the audio, isn’t it like any other text? Podcast search cousin Podzinger seems to treat all multi-term searches with a Boolean AND, unless quotes are used, which is more in-line with searcher expectations.

But here’s something that’s genuinely tricky: getting accurate transcription results. Automated speech-to-text transcription technology is shockingly mediocre.

During my presentation at CiL, I played a sample Podscope result on the search term “libraries” and, wouldn’t you know it, no mention of “libraries” in the clip. Most folks in the audience were naturally expecting the word libraries and therefore totally missed the word “Blackberries” that was erroneously transcribed.

Podzinger shows keyword-in-context in their results, so you can get a feel for just how poor the technology is. A sample result for “libraries” reads as follows: “expensive business and that Contribution double life will be economy by libraries like good bet that there’s certainly”

All this to say that, while these automated speech-to-text technologies are interesting and fun, you have to understand their limitations before relying on them as a search tool. Added bonus tip: Until the technology improves, use fewer and shorter search terms/phrases to minimize the likelihood of transcription error masking the results you’re looking for.

Monday means another journey to Carnival-land. Head on over to TangognaT for the Carnival of the Infosciences #32. Good to see some new names in the mix of submissions this week. Does this mean we’ll have some new hosting volunteers? How about some old ones?

Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by over at ReferenceWork. No intro post yet, but I imagine that you can send submissions to reference.work[at]gmail.com, as listed on the site. Or feel free to use the Blog Carnival submission form.

Netsquared posted a very handy list of 7 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Podcasts. I talk about most of these notions in my presentations. The post at NetSquared gives examples of each suggestion. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to see how these apply to libraries.

1. A leader at your nonprofit or NGO talks about what is going on in the organization and n your field.

2. Short, informational pieces about one issue combining voiceover by a narrator/host and interviews with the people you serve.

3. Weekly updates about what is going on in your organization followed by interviews with experts in your field.

4. Have your constituents create the podcast.

5. Be creative!

6. Use recordings from presentations.

7. Turn your radio show into a podcast.

Thanks to Podcast Alley, I received notification of The Library Channel, a podcast from the Arizona State University Libraries. Although I have not yet sampled the content, there appear to be a few interesting recordings of library events that took place on campus. Here’s the podcast feed link.

Truck on over to Tinfoil + Raccoon for the Carnival of the Infosciences #31. Thanks to Rochelle for another great festival. And if you haven’t checked out Intuitive Revelations yet, you need to…now.

Next week’s Carnival will be hosted over at TangognaT. No post over there yet, so send submissions to me and I’ll make sure they get where they need to go.

Update: Send submissions to tangognat @ tangognat.com.