LibraryCrunch Visual Archive

Riding the podcasting wave, several new services allow blogs (and RSS feeds) to be easily converted to audio -- on-the-fly conversion that requires only a simple mouse-click. One such service, Talkr, has been integrated into this blog (notice the new "Listen to this article" link at the bottom of this post entry). The Talkr service has been available for a while now, and the voice isn't bad -- not what we remember from several years ago when it was like listening to a drunk (yet still smarter than me) Stephen Hawking. Imagine this same type of service being utilized on your library's home page, within its catalog, and on all of its blogs (your library does have blogs, right?), allowing customers to listen to your latest audio-book reviews, your teen events blog, and "discussions" about your new books -- all fed through the talking service of your choice to your customer's MP3 player or computer desktop.