At museums: invasion of the podcasts [New York Times]
Audio tours are now being upended around the world by something eminently more portable, accessible and flexible: podcasting, the wildly popular practice of posting recordings online, so they can be heard through a computer or downloaded to tiny mobile devices like iPods and other MP3 players.
Museum podcasts — both do-it-yourself versions and those created by museums themselves — have taken off, changing the look and feel of audio tours at places ranging from the venerable, like the Met and the Victoria and Albert, to the virtually unknown, like the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Ind., and the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia near San Francisco.
The podcasts are making countless hours of recorded information — like curators’ comments, interviews with artists and scholars, and even interviews with the subjects of some artwork — widely available to people who have never visited, and may never visit, the museums that are making the recordings.
Read full story
(This is a permanent link to the article, accessible free of charge, via UserLand)
