Audacity

From LIS 460 Summer 2007

1 What is Audacity?
2 Potential uses in a school library
3 Questions and concerns
4 References and more info

What is Audacity?

Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder. It works with Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Its main uses are to

record live audio
edit MP3 and WAV sound files and other recordings
cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.

Audacity also allows you to change the speed or pitch of a recording, edit audio, and create multiple audio tracks. It was created by Dominic Mazzoni of Google. You can download Audacity here. You must also download the Audacity encoder in order to export files as MP3s (necessary to turn them into podcasts and to reduce the size of the files). There are many supporting materials available for Audacity--tutorials, tips, and podcasts on how to use the program abound.

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Potential uses in a school library

In the most obvious use, Audacity is an easy way to record audio for podcasts. It's free, which is a huge advantage because it saves your budget, it can be used by many people even at home, and it can be downloaded onto many school computers. Students, librarians, and teachers could create podcasts on a variety of subjects:

updates for parents on school happenings
updates for administrators at other schools on school happenings
showcase student poetry or stories
share student work
record student interviews and discussions
give book talks
"talk" to other students across the world (at a sister school in another country, for example)
promote candidates for student offices
give updates from different student groups, including recording audio of student group events
add an audio component to a school newspaper
give tours of the library, the school, someplace they went on a field trip, or interesting places in the community.

Audacity can also be used to record other projects and events, even if they are not turned into podcasts. For example,

students could practice for speeches or presentations
members of the debate team could practice their arguments
a social studies class could record a mock trial
music students could record themselves or their teachers playing a piece so they know how it should sound or what they need to work on
students can practice foreign language pronunciation
teachers can add audio to an already-recorded podcast using the editing features in Audacity
teachers can edit a recorded Skype call with someone who can't be there in person: an author, a person in another state, or a school in another country, for example.

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Questions and concerns

Q: How big are the files?

A: That depends on the bit rate you set and on the duration of your recording. There is a pretty good explanatory chart here (see page 2). One concern in using Audacity in schools is making sure that there is room on the school computers and school network to store the files. The MP3s take up much less room, so storing these files and deleting the larger, original audio files is one way to conserve space.

Q: Where is the official support information? There's a lot of info about Audacity on the web!

A: Yes, there are numerous tutorials and hints and Web pages about how to use Audacity. One of the problems is sorting through all the information to find reliable sources. I have tried to identify some reliable and comprehensive sites below. The Audacity homepage, Wikipedia page, and Audacity wiki seem to be the best.

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