Ok I truely believe that libraries can really use and help disseminate the great podcasts that are out there. Finding them and knowing how to showcase them are some of the many hurdles I am trying to figure out.

Finding medical podcasts from reliable sources/authors is somewhat frustrating. Searching iTunes for medical podcasts can be an exercise in patience because the topics are so broad. There are no subtopics under Health, so the searcher has to plow through things like "A Moment in Yoga," "A Dieter's Life," "Vegan Radio," and all sorts of questionable podcasts relating to sex, just to get to things like "Johns Hopkins Medicine Weekly News," "Mayo Clinic Medical Edge Radio," or "SCCM Podcast iCritical Care." Equally frustrating is there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to what gets into the Health category vs. the Science Category. NEJM is in the Science category.

I also want to make the list of medical podcasts available to my users. What is the best method? Should I put them on the library's intranet page, the catalog, both places, or somewhere else? I made a an intranet page listing the podcasts, but I also wanted to integrate them into the catalog. I am not a cataloger, so the idea of putting podcasts in my catalog is a little bit of a conundrum for me. I have been listing them as a serial since publishers/podcasters broadcast multiple volumes/programs per year. But cataloging them as serials completely loses each program's title and subject which is very important. So should I catalog each program individually and not the whole podcast as a serial?! That would be time consuming. Of course it would be much easier if there was a medical podcast database, kind of like MEDLINE for podcasts, but since that isn't available what are my options?

Currently medical journal publishers like NEJM, Nature, SCCM, and the Journal of Medical Practice Management are podcasting. I realize the medium is still in its infancy but should this be something the NLM should be keeping their eye on to include in MEDLINE? I realize some of the health science databases used index Audio Digest programs. Should some medical database such as CINAHL or MEDLINE index these programs or should there be a newly created medical database. I don't know.

In the mean time I am looking at all ways that librarians are cataloging/collecting/profiling podcasts for their users. Are you doing it? Why or why not? How are you doing it? What are your obstacles?