One evening after the close of our monthly PALS meeting here at the library, our minds overflowing with possibilities of how to further serve our community and speared on by the support of our fellow PALS team, we librarians stayed and talked for quite a spell. We have ample ideas, but not always the resources or capability to make them happen immediately. Much of what we desire to do for the community will take a lot of time to build into existence, for which we are willing to work and to be patient. In the mean time, we do want to become known to our community so that the services we are able to offer right now are being used.

I am not sure which one of us first mentioned the idea of a podcast… with a podcast, we could reach all age groups. Who would we interview? what would we talk about? the ideas flowed and within minutes we had a formed vision and a long list of possible guests. We found out we could record and publish at no cost to the library, by using our personal equipment. What was stopping us?

That idea was a spark, which ignited a rocket. BLAST OFF! Within 48 hours we had recorded our first episode. Within 72 we had recorded our second! We realized this was actually going to happen. We can do this!! We nervously and excitedly hit PUBLISH.

Our first two episodes were trial runs, learning our equipment and finding out how to edit the interviews. We found royalty free music, entitled “Mr. Badger” for the background. The music is playful and fun, it made us happy. We wrote and recorded an introduction and closing to be used in every episode, this may change one day but for now it simplifies our work. Currently, librarians Landon and Hilda take turns editing the episodes so that the work load is not too heavy for one person. We are still learning with each new episode and hope to improve our editing skills.

In Episode 0 and in Episode 1 Aimee asks Landon and Hilda general questions about their reading life and what brought them to become librarians at Princeton Public Library. We hope to record more Reading Life episodes. If you live in Princeton and are an avid reader, stop by and see us sometime! We would love to chat!