Our collection management librarian, Joe and I put together a new podcast that highlights resources in our library. As I did the behind the scenes work to get this podcast ready for the public, I forgot about all of the steps involved in getting this out. Thus, as a form of documentation and as a way to share with others who may be interested, here are the steps (which took about a day). There are probably experienced podcasters out there who may think I am doing this all backwards…but, que sera.

1) Proposed podcast objectives, purpose, and assessment to administration for approval
2) Recorded introductions and closings with our campus sound guy
3) Discussed and outlined podcast episodes
4) Recorded episodes
5) Spliced intros, raw episode files, and closings, dropped MP3 file size (16 kbs, 11025 Hz, mono)
6) Created XML file (which I am still doing by hand)
7) Tested XML file in iTunes, Netvibes, Bloglines Trouble shooted (trouble shot?) XML file in FeedBurner to find two problems (feedburner and iTunes did not like the = sign in our asp page URLs in the perm link tags, so I had to use the alternate URLs)
9) Created FeedBurner Feed
10) Created FeedBlitz service for email notifications
11) Created email sign up page and tested page
12) Created new Web page for podcast, moved template to that page, updated content
13) Submitted XML feed to iTunes
14) Updated Chicklets (iTunes, Bloglines, Google, MyYahoo) on right side of podcast page and tested them to be sure they worked
15) Gave the pages a final review
16) Submitted pages to our Created Services Department for a final proof
17) Published pages to the college’s public Web site

Our library has added several Google maps to our Web site. We recognized that we continually direct students to useful places (such as public libraries) around our college district. We thought that adding a map of these locations would be pretty nice. Thus, we put together the maps section of our site.

We have updated our catalog’s look and feel. We have also improved some of the functionality of our catalog.

Had the chance to play with an iPhone a few weeks ago, and I took the opportunity to see how our library’s Web site looking on the browser. I have to say that it looked fine, and I could navigate and search pretty easily. Here’s a photo:

We have been working over the past few months (when we’ve had time) to get a flash player to work on our event podcast page. I very happy to report that it now works! You can check it out on our Library Event Podcast Page.

We had been having some issues getting the object code into our homegrown CMS. After we got it to work, we joked that you make a CMS system that limits access to the code and look and feel of the site, and then, you spend all of your time breaking the CMS to get access to the code.

[Update: We have discovered that the Flashplayer we used does not work in IE. This is a dumb mistake on our part for not testing this sooner. So, we are back to the drawing board.]