Podcasting
Through our Podcasting Partnership program, the Columbia University Libraries supports podcasting as a form of research storytelling and scholarship with student and faculty partners. We provide educational and technical services to publish professional and impactful podcasts as an emerging form of digital scholarship.
Please note that the Podcasting Program is not currently accepting new partners.
What is Podcasting?
A podcast is more than a simple audio recording. It's an immersive, serialized form of storytelling that spans disciplines and depends upon an established set of creative and cultural practices. Come work with the Libraries to learn the conventions and the practical steps to produce scholarly work in this genre.
Equipment Lending
Columbia University Libraries provides podcasting kits for borrowing by the Columbia community. These kits are currently available through Barnard College's IMATs unit on the second floor of the The Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning.
Learning Opportunities
The Fall 2023 podcasting workshop series sponsored by Digital Scholarship and the Wiener Music & Arts Library features workshops on writing, editing, recording, and publishing your podcasts.
Digital Scholarship's annual Podcasts Essentials workshop series, which provides training and education in the various compositional and technical aspects of producing podcasts, is on hiatus during the 2022–23 academic year; however, please see the workshops listed above for relating training opportunities. Please also see below recordings of some past Podcast Essentials workshops.
Lastly, please see the Libraries' more general list of workshops for related sessions and to register for individual workshops.
ADOBE AUDITION
Curious how to edit a podcast in Adobe Audition? This tutorial explains the basics of using the interface, inputting and editing tape, organizing tracks, mixing your piece, and exporting it.
ARCHIVAL AUDIO
Finding a good piece of archival tape is like finding audio gold. You’ll feel a rush in your ears when you hear it. This workshop discusses the craft of using archival tape to transform your storytelling. You’ll learn where to find it and how to use it, elevating your story into a more immersive, textured listening experience.
AUDACITY
This workshop introduces the open access software Audacity. It focuses on how Audacity can be used to edit podcasts with an emphasis on:
- Recording spoken audio with Audacity
- Editing sound clips
- Cleaning up white noise and refining audio quality
- Layering sound effects and music
- Exporting audio files
SOUND DESIGN
In this workshop, Peter Leonard builds a soundscape in realtime for a scene narrated by Science Vs hosts, taking input from volunteers.