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The Iowa City Public Library is offering patrons a new technology feature.

Last month, the library launched “On Air: The ICPL Podcast,” a third installment in its podcast series featuring staff members discussing the library’s collections in a casual conversation.

“The original idea was that we have all of these great conversations here in our office and we thought that it might be interesting and the public might be interested in hearing some of that stuff,” said Bond Drager, the library’s audio visual specialist. “We are just sitting down and having a conversation. Some of the things we might be talking about are things we watch or read that were interesting.”

A podcast is a compilation of audio or video files in a series of episodes. The episodes are meant to be downloaded or viewed online via computer or mobile device.

“On Air: The ICPL Podcast” joins two other library podcasts, “One of a Kind,” a series of interviews with Iowa City community leaders from 1993 to the present, and “Tell Me Your Story,” a 40-interview series with people who have made a difference in Iowa City life taped from 1989 to 1992. Both programs were produced and hosted by Ellen Buchanan.

“The goals for the podcast were community engagement,” Drager said. “We also are always looking for a way to reach a broader audience or a different demographic with our information. We have a blog and we have social media out. We know that not everybody will necessarily access the library in that way, but we thought a podcast of us might be a way to get to people who might not normally be engaged with the library.”

It was an opportunity for playfulness, she added.

“And for the community to kind of see behind the curtains about some of the things that happen here at the library,” Drager said. “I kind of wanted to promote Iowa City and just reading in general.”

The newest podcast features a literary death match between characters in two young adult books, a reference librarian telling the story of how one question from a patron led to weeks of discovering a piece of Johnson County history, and how the librarian in charge of purchasing music discovers new artists.

Meredith Hines-Dochterman, the library’s public relations specialist, said recordings have been fun to make.

“It’s still at the very beginning stages, but we did do a few practice ones beforehand, and I think we’ve all kind of found our footing and we’re having a good time,” she said.

The goal of podcasts is to give listeners a new way to be involved with the library.

“We all have podcasts that we love and finding new ways of carrying new information from the traditional newspapers to blogs to social media,” Hines-Dochterman said. “There’s just so many platforms out there. We want to explore as many of them as we can to try to reach out to as many people because obviously we consider the library an important force in our community and we want people to know about it.”

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