University of Washington Information School Podcasts

The students at the University of Washington's Information School have been producing a podcast program known as Infospeak.

"It showcases outstanding leaders in various areas of information access and awareness, speaking from authoritative vantage points about many interesting and relevant information issues of our day."

So far, they have had 4 shows:

• Michael Gorman, President Emeritus of the American Library Association: "His reservations about the value of Google's plan to digitize the world's books, his doubts about the quality of online blogging, his insistence that the human mind needs the enrichment of libraries filled with books, spark howls of indignant and vitriolic condemnation."
• Dr. Michael B. Eisenberg, Dean Emeritus, University of Washington Information School: "How should library education meet the new century? Can library schools find their way?"
• 3 guests - Ulla Brohed, Malmö Library, Sweden; Nancy Huling, University of Washington Libraries; and Deborah Jacobs, Seattle Public Library: "At the public library in southern Sweden's third largest city, Malmö, a patron can check out a human being for a 45 minute chat. Is this nuts?... Ulla and her colleague Catharina Norèn read in a paper about the project Living Library which had taken place in a Danish library and were thrilled by the idea. A Muslim woman, a lesbian, a homeless, an ex-convict, an animal activist, an imam and five others - all of them were borrowed by interested visitors and the project was a great success."
• Joseph Janes, Associate Dean for Academics at the Information School of the University of Washington: "We are deeply curious, compelled to understand each other and the times we live in. We possess a relentless drive to know everything going on in the world, all the time. And so we turn voraciously to our computers, and Google. We search (...) Search is many things: from a vulgar information brothel to the most sublime ideals shared by humanity. I wonder how our expanding use of search technology will influence the particular direction into which our society will plunge. "