A Historical View of Library Instructional Podcasts Demonstrating They Were Beneficial to Students and Staff at a New Zealand College of Learning

A Review of: Jowitt, A. (2008). Perceptions and usage of library instructional podcasts by staff and students at New Zealand’s Universal College of Learning (UCOL). Reference Services Review, 36(3), 312–336. https://doi.org/10.1108/00907320810895396 Abstract Objective – To examine usage of a specific set of library instructional podcasts and the potential of the format for effective library instruction. Design – Concurrent mixed methods survey. Setting – Multiple campuses at a polytechnic college in New Zealand. Subjects – A total of 86 self-selected, non-random students and staff. Methods – Web-based survey, piloted before a broader launch, with open and closed questions in one survey instrument (SurveyPro) regarding six sample podcasts accessible via the college’s library website. The researcher used closed questions to gather quantitative data with Likert and verbal frequency scales and used concurrent triangulation to ensure balance with qualitative open-ended question responses for proper later interpretation. Main Results – Of the 86 participants in the study, 71.1% responded that the five library podcasts were “very good.” The study determined that the most useful podcast was called “My account” and helped students and staff activate and use their library accounts. Overall, students enjoyed the five library podcasts slightly more than staff. The orientation walking tour was the least popular podcast. The researchers hypothesized that this was because the podcast did not fit the users’ preferred medium, which was computer based. Even listeners who owned a portable media device preferred using a media player on their computer to access the podcasts. The participants preferred to listen to the podcasts during the day. The participants found that the 24/7 availability and the ability to listen to the material repeatedly were particularly helpful features. Conclusion – Based on the research results, students and staff found library instructional podcasting advantageous because of its ease of access and constant availability. Some participants mentioned ways to improve the quality of the podcasts, but they found them to be an effective new medium overall. Additional research is needed to evaluate podcasts as an instructional medium.

Watch Them Closely

The method employed in this intervention is an active performance in writing, using the voice of a docent, who guides a small party of the curious, and possibly bewildered, on a walking tour of Auckland’s inner-city monuments. The subject of what gets commissioned, created, and installed under the general heading of a public monument can be placed within the context of the recent and continuing range of disputes and confrontations about monuments—Rhodes in England and South Africa, Civil War statues in the United States, Cook in Aotearoa New Zealand. This article attempts a mediation (not to be misread as a ‘meditation’) of the messages a selection of Auckland’s city monuments send out on a daily basis, subliminal as some of them are. The intention is to carry out a ‘close reading’ of Auckland’s monuments and, hopefully, to alter the wave-length of the light in which the city is bathed.

Revisiting the Harz Tour of Coleridge and the ‘Carlyon-Parry-Greenation’ in May 1799

The walking tour of the Harz Mountains in 1799 by Coleridge and his English companions – Clement Carlyon, Charles Parry, and George Bellas Greenough – was an exploration of Romantic science and Romantic poetry. This paper examines the Harz tour of the ‘Carlyon-Parry-Greenation’ as a geological and mineralogical excursion concurrent with Coleridge's Harzreise described in his letters. Influenced by the natural history lectures of Professor Blumenbach, the Harz walking tour was organised around visits to caves and mines. A comparative analysis of Coleridge's letters and Charles Parry's journal reveals that while the tour was more significant as a geological field trip for the ‘Carlyon-Parry-Greenation’, it was while walking en route to these destinations of scientific exploration that Coleridge responded to the landscapes traversed and discovered his own Harzreise.

Guinea Pigs

This chapter discusses the implications for citizens of data-driven management by charting the issues of living in a smart city testbed area, demonstrated through a walking tour for local residents, led by a public official. It was clear to the recently hired community liaison officer for the city's smart docklands team that the key expected outcome was to convince local residents that there was nothing to fear from the trialling of new technologies in their area and to get their buy-in. However, interaction with the local community had been a secondary concern to those establishing initiative. They had been much more focused on the technical and business aspects of building the testbed and securing investment than how it related to those that lived and worked there. Nevertheless, the community liaison officer tries to convince the citizens that they do not collect personal data and that the initiative provides job opportunities.

(In)Justice in the City

This article deals with a city walk, (In)Justice in the city, which took place in the Haga neighborhood of Sweden’s second-largest city, Gothenburg, in 2016 and was conducted within the symposia Exploiting Justice. The walk started from Haga's peripheral areas and gradually approached its center, in order to provide space for narratives other than the dominant public image of Haga. Various conceptual and perceptive entrances were used for the participants' physical encounters with the five sites visited. At each location, complex layers of history, urban planning, and people's intersecting interests became visible. Although the walking tour generated responses from participants who spoke of abandonment, secrecy, order, and lack of encounters, it simultaneously opened the possibility for a variety of different interpretations of the sites. In this way, the walk can be seen as a critical performative practice that awakens many different voices and narratives, all of which can be included in a complex exercise of democratic society.

Collaborative App-Making as a Research Method

This article details a community engagement project involving mobile app technology to create a walking tour of a Baltimore neighborhood. Greenmount West is an historically African American community in Baltimore City that is now experiencing rapid gentrification. After receiving a “mash up” grant from a local museum, researchers were partnered with the director of a local community center and created the idea to create a walking tour through the perspective of youth. In this case, four Black young women who shared their perspectives on their changing neighborhood and were involved in every facet of producing the tour. The article provides a step by step process for how to use this particular technology as a form of community engagement and research.