A single USB microphone, inexpensive headphones and a tabletop sound shield formed San Diego State's first library podcast setup in 2018. The university now has five dedicated studios, and their use has climbed from 96 recording sessions in the 2022-23 academic year to 662 last year, SDSU reported Thursday.
The studios sit inside the University Library's Digital Humanities Center, which opened in 2017 to bring computation, media and cultural inquiry into one flexible space. Each of the current four-person rooms includes four Shure SM7B microphones on boom arms, a Rodecaster Pro II mixing board and a Mac Studio. Staff work with groups to start and complete recordings.
That equipment changes the scale of what a class can ask students to make. A multitrack system records each speaker separately, allowing an editor to adjust voices after the conversation rather than accept a single blended track. Remote guests can join through Bluetooth or Zoom. The center also has a larger room that can hold as many as eight people with a Blue Yeti microphone.
Demand for podcast instruction has increased by more than 300% over three years, according to the university. Nearly 40 programs across eight colleges now use podcasting, from Journalism and Media Studies courses to the College of Education's doctoral program in Community College Leadership. The growth is not confined to media majors or to extracurricular shows.
Digital Humanities Librarian Pamella Lach began a summer podcast institute with the National Humanities Center in 2019. Ten institutes over the following five years brought together graduate students, faculty, academic workers and independent scholars to move through research, recording, editing and publication. The center's current staff page says those institutes have served more than 600 participants.
Projects made in the rooms range from classroom assignments to continuing series. SDSU points to podcasts about horror, the mental and identity dimensions of sports, and the challenges facing new adults. The Faculty Futures Lab is produced with the Center for Teaching and Learning. Student employees also make CHAT DHC while helping other users with appointments and programs.
The expansion rests on labor as well as hardware. Programs and operations specialist Patrick Flanigan provides technical and creative support and helped scale the recording infrastructure; SDSU recognized his work with a 2025 Presidential Staff Excellence Award for Innovation and Creativity. Student employees learn production by doing it, then translate that knowledge into peer assistance for other crews.
Access has boundaries. The library says its studios are open to SDSU students, faculty and staff from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays when classes are in session, and reservations are made online. The equipment remains on site rather than circulating. Work is also underway to expand podcast support at SDSU Imperial Valley, though Thursday's account did not provide a completion date or equipment list for that effort.
The sixfold rise in sessions measures use, not the quality or audience of every recording. Still, it marks a change in the library's role: production is no longer a niche experiment behind one improvised microphone. Five small rooms now carry voices from dozens of programs, with the center supplying the cables, coaching and quiet needed to make an idea audible.