Welcome back to Season Eight of Linking Our Libraries! We are so happy to have you with us this season!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work! 

As you can probably guess, since you are currently listening to us talk, we are not only fans of podcasts but we also create them! These are a relatively easy way for libraries to share ideas and information with their community members. Today we will walk through some of the steps you can follow to help your library to create and share audio information in podcast form!   

The Basics:

The first thing we want to say, and this is not necessarily to be discouraging: podcasting takes a lot more time and effort than you think it will. People’s images of podcasting tend to be happy people, sitting around a desk with microphones, cheerfully having conversations filled with interesting thoughts.

Sure. That happens. But getting there is a lot of work, and transforming those words in a room into words in your headphones is a lot of work.

So, think through all of the material we are going to share with you today before you make a final decision on whether or not to start a podcast. Of course, we are always happy to have more, good quality podcasts in the library world! We would love for you to join us!

But there is nothing wrong with being a good podcast consumer, and not starting one of your own. There are enough podcasts that only went three episodes, podcasts with terrible audio quality, podcasts that are just people giggling over how hard it is to have something interesting to say. We do not need more of them.

As with so many things we talk about here, thinking about your strategy, and making a good plan for success, will be very helpful to you in creating a good podcast. And actively deciding not to make a podcast may also be a good decision for you!

Let’s look at the material.

Getting Started:

Start with a reason. Why do you want to create a podcast? It can be just about anything: to share news about your library, to talk about skills people can build in the library, to talk about books, to talk about gaming – anything. You just need a focus beyond “hey – that sounds fun.” So think through that, and get it written down.

And maybe look around at the podcast already out there. There are literally millions of them. Is someone already doing what you want to do? Are they already saying what you want to say? Okay, maybe you do not need a podcast yourself.

Of course, you may have your own take on any subject. And starting a podcast can be just right for you! Or, your podcast may focus on something nobody else is covering: your specific library programs, things in your community, topics related to your area that no one else is discussing. Great! That’s a podcast.

Immediately banish the thought that you are going to be the next Serial, or My Favorite Murder, or Radiolab. Again: there are millions of podcasts out there. It’s unlikely that yours is going to be huge – and that’s perfectly fine! 

Think about the community of listeners you want to reach. “Everyone, everywhere” is not a great focus. “The students in this school” is much more reasonable, or even “library staff in this state” would be reasonable. There is no need to have a huge population of listeners; just work on a message that will resonate with the community you want to reach.

Look around your library. Who else wants to do this with you? You can do a podcast alone, of course. But, as we have said: it’s a lot of work. It will be easier with at least two of you, or a small team who are all doing different things to support the podcast.

Things that may need to happen for every single episode you ever produce:

• Coming up with a topic
• Finding a guest host
• Assembling a script and resources
• Setting up the equipment to record
• Having a recording software
• Having a website to host the recordings
• Having a website to share your content – verbal and written
• Talking for long enough to get interesting ideas mentioned, not so long you get tired and the sound goes bad
• Saving the recording
• Uploading the recording
• Editing the recording
• Uploading the edited version to your host
• Creating a graphic for your podcast as a whole
• Creating a graphic for this episode
• Creating a webpage for your episode
• Creating a webpage for all the recordings in that season
• Creating a page on your hosting site
• Creating a page on your Patreon site 
• Sharing it with your community
• Telling them about it again
• Telling them about it another time

You can see how working with a team would make this much easier!

Equipment:

The equipment you need will really vary. The main thing you want to think about is the sound you hear when it is recorded. You can spend a lot of money and time on this, or throttle back and spend less money but still a lot of time.

Essentially you need a microphone for each person, and software to hold the recording. And as with so many other things, the pandemic has changed the way a lot of this happens.

We have a mixer in our office, with four microphones and four stands, and lots of wires. Great! We can invite people in to record, give everyone a mic, and make it happen. But of course, in the pandemic that is not possible. We tried a variety of different software packages for recording, and finally just went with Zoom. And, surprisingly, it is okay.

The key really is having good microphones. Think about the Zoom meetings you have been in that are garbled, static-filled, or eternally on mute. People who are going to record with you need a microphone; they cannot just shout into a phone or into a computer’s microphone. It is surprisingly hard to convince people of this! Several podcast hosts talk about this: guests reason that they can hear themselves just fine while they are at home, so their sound is fine. But of course: it is only the sound that is heard at the end that matters. And for that, you need good microphones.

Scheduling:

When you plan out your podcast, think about how you want it to be structured. When we started, we were very firm on a 15 to 20 minute length – no longer. That was a few years ago, and people’s interest in longer episodes has increased; but you always want to keep it as concise as possible.

To make that happen you probably need a script. Or, at the very least you need a detailed outline with notes. You want to have a sense of how much material you have to cover. As you are recording an episode, it can be a sad discovery that you only had eight minutes of content – or that you have an hour if you only planned 20 minutes. Just think ahead, and it will be fine.

If you have a guest coming, encourage them to make notes before they arrive. Most of our first-time guests realize as soon as we stop recording that they had another story, another point to make – but did not have it written down. That’s fine on your end if they had enough interesting things to say. But it’s also kind of frustrating for you if the guest was pretty quiet the whole time – then bursts out with interesting material after you have recorded.

Also, think about a recording schedule. We went with podcast seasons, and that has been such a great idea. While we do put out two different podcasts every single week, and have done that for years, each of our two main podcasts run on seasons. So, this is season eight of Linking Our Libraries. While we have new content on this feed, our other podcast, Reading With Libraries, has short book recommendation episodes dropping on it. When that has a new season of content, this feed will have short book recommendation episodes, so there is always something new for everyone.

You may only run one podcast feed, but the idea of new content every single week for 52 weeks of a year is a LOT to consider. Or, you may like seasons because you can break up topics and cover them in different seasons.

Planning these out, creating a chart with dates and episode subjects, helps you to keep it all straight and to start planning ahead. We use Google Sheets, so we can both see the charts. And we can put each season on a new tab, to keep all the episodes in one document.

Audio Editing:

This is an area where you can spend a lot of time and energy. The big names in podcasting have teams of people who do this – going over every single word said, to make sure it’s relevant and useful to the episode. You can add in into and outro music. (Be sure to either pay for it, or to use music with copyright permission!) You can have sound effects between segments, to draw attention to different parts.

We take a more relaxed approach. Angie takes the audio file, does sound editing work on it [FEEL FREE TO DETAIL HERE]. Then she adds in our music. Essentially, what we record is what you hear. While there are times in many episodes where the sound goes wonky, or we mess up something we are saying, or we just need time to think – Angie can edit those out. For the most part, you are hearing us pretty much as we record it.

The Web Work:

You need a place to host your audio files. While you can go on a budget and just do this yourself – it’s not a great idea. We use Libsyn, and they have been great. They host millions of podcasts. We pay $15/month for our subscription; but if you are just starting out you could likely do their $5/month package and be just fine. And they make it easy for us to not only use their website, but also to have tools we can add to our own page so people can stream each episode. There are other podcast hosts out there, of course, and you should look around to see which one will be most useful to you.

It does take a little while to get the hang of this. You can create an episode by uploading the audio file. Then you need to put in your title, description, and some tagging words. And, because Apple does its own thing with podcasts, you need to redo all of that in a different section to meet their requirements – including adding in seasons and episodes in different areas, taking out all your links, and making only a very short description. (So yes: if you are getting this from Apple, everyone else is getting longer descriptions with links to things. Sorry!)

You add in a graphic, then set up the date and time you want it to publish, and you are done!

Well, of course not completely done.

Libsyn, and other hosts, will give you a page you can use to share your podcasts. But if you really want to make them useful, you need to have them also on your website. On our website, we have a master page for each podcast. You can go to Linking Our Libraries, and see information about the podcast in general, and also links and information on our prior seasons, as well as links to every episode we are doing this season.

Every season has an individual page too, with links to every episode that appeared in that season.

Then, every episode needs an individual page. That page has the graphic for the individual episodes, all of our show notes, the links to other resources we share, links to the books we are going to talk about in a few minutes. And it has the button people can use to stream it right there. Some people really do not want to put podcasts on their phones or devices; they want to stream and we need to make that easy for them.

It can be a lot to keep track of. Working with your chart of episodes and seasons, and with the menu function on your website, will help you to keep it looking good.

We also publish an article on our website, and in our weekly newsletter, about each episode. That is a shortened version of our show notes, and also has the link where people can stream the episode. You want to make things as easy as possible for your listeners! It links back to the individual episode show notes page, so people could look for all the resources we are sharing.

And, maybe you want to be on Patron! Our Reading With Libraries podcast is on Patron, where people can choose to sponsor us on a monthly basis. This means creating yet another page for each episode, with different content. And you have to provide something to make it special for your listeners. Different levels of support can mean different rewards. For the most part – just keep it simple. In each episode, we provide the description, a link to the episode, and a behind-the-scenes secret that is locked and available only to Patreon supporters. It’s a small thing, but it provides some added value for people who are willing to support us!

We hope you feel ready to make the best decision for yourself about whether to start a podcast! It is a lot of work, time, and effort. It requires both creativity and technical skills. But if you have things to say, content to share, and information to distribute – podcasts can be great tools for you!

Some Library Podcasts:  

• Cyberpunk Librarian – covers everything library-technology related
• Book Club for Masochists – they read the books you’ve been dreading!
• The Librarian Is In – Reader’s Advisory podcast from the NYPL
• Library Figures – talks about marketing and gives tips, specifically for librarians
• Above from https://bookriot.com/librarian-podcasts/

Books Read

And now we have one of our favorite parts of each episode: sharing books! Each of us will share a book we are reading. Links to each book will be on our show notes page, with a link to Amazon.com. If you buy a nice book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits. Thanks in advance!!

•  Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space, by Lynn Sherr
• Pete the Cat Checks Out the Library, James Dean

Conclusion

Thanks to you for joining us this week! It’s always better when you are here with us!

Here are a few quick takeaways from today’s discussion:

• Make a plan for your podcast’s focus before you get started
• Be ready for some technical challenges, though it should generally not be too tough
• Creating and sharing good content takes time; but it is worth it in the long run

Be sure you are subscribed to Linking Our Libraries in your favorite podcast app – or just stream it on our website.

If you want to hear more about books, subscribe to our podcast Reading With Libraries in that same favorite app. Get a new episode each week, with more book suggestions.

Check back in with us next week for another library skill!