Radios @ Radios

This is an excellent site for librarians and other information workers who want to provide their customers with a broad range of information services. The site provides in‐built links to the Internet connections for numerous radio and television stations around the world, so that if you have the relevant software of your computer plus a fast modem, you can actually play a radio station’s broadcast live via your computer. One of the oddities of the Radios site is that it is based in Brazil, so one of the two language options is Portuguese. Fortunately for many of us, the other language of choice is English. Most of the software needed, such as RealPlayer, can be found free on the Internet. Upgrades to this sort of software giving extra features come at a cost, but they are not expensive. The quality of the sound can be very good in some cases ‐ I thought it marvellous to listen to the excellent news service of the BBC World Service almost as clearly as if it was being broadcast from just down the road. But don’t get excited about the prospect of television over the Internet just yet. Even with a T1 connection on my office computer, the pictures come at a maximum of about five frames per second, and often less, so in effect you get a photograph of a talking head on the screen. Also remember that very few television stations, and only small number of radio stations, make their broadcasts available from their Internet sites. There are enough that do, however, to make the Radios site well worth adding to your library’s list of Web sites.