The twentieth thing

When I try and think of things that I can not remember, I think of familiar sounds until eventually the word/name/concept materialises out of the ether. I don't watch TV but listen to the radio instead, not while I am doing other things but as a past-time in itself. Radio4 is a lifeline; it provides news, comedy, drama, and lovely documentaries. My mind contains a myriad of facts harvested from weird documentaries on radio4 and I make liberal use of them so that other people think I am well read, when in fact most of it is transmitted straight into my brain. Unlike Twinset and Purls, I am very audio centric.

You would have thought that podcasts are perfect for me then, and you would be right. Recently, they have proved very important in learning Spanish. I have podcasts ranging from beginner lessons through to intermediate and advanced lessons, which demand listening with a pen and paper. I also have great podcasts on conversational Spanish as well as some excellent podcasts from the Spanish equivalent of radio4. My current favourite being El Ojo Critico (the critical eye) basically a Spanish Front Row with a Spanish Mark Lawson.

While there is a lot of scope for podcasts within university education - lectures being the obvious step - and libraries should provide resources for learners with disabilities or just an audio bent, I don't think that they can be used as part of an effective information literacy programme in isolation. Information literacy largely uses visual interfaces, which makes wholly audio resources difficult to conceive. Also, the information behaviour of students that I have seen as a trainee suggests that what they are often after is a quick solution to a problem they didn't envisage.

The ultimate problem for information literacy programmes is to provide a service that people don't think they need. Podcasts in isolation won't be effective as their serial nature requires users to be interested from the start. Were I in charge of an information literacy programme, I would try and get information literacy - if not librarians - into lectures as well as departments. Perhaps even there could be an information literacy certificate for students to append to their CVs, which could give them an edge in the market. I understand this sounds like the naivety of someone entering LIS school and is wildly unrealistic. Does it make me want to become a subject librarian? Well, it sounds like a big task. We'll see.