#16

Following the schedule given, we bypass thing #15 for now, with the intention of returning to it later.

For now, YouTube.

Finding a video "worth adding to your blog" is a pretty subjective task. I could try and choose something relevant to libraries and reference. Or, I could post this:



So, clearly, YouTube is good for a lot of silliness (it took a lot of willpower to not just post a bunch of Japanese gum commercials and weird David Shrigley cartoons). And a lot of it is junk. As a result of it's sheer volume, though, there is a lot of useful material to be found. Tutorial videos that people upload are great, and I've used some to help me through the HTML part of the Technology Gateway. I watched another so I could have a visual walkthrough of how to hand-bind a sketchbook. And I think when it comes to the junk, you don't have to deal with it / watch it if you don't want to, and I think a lot of it the general public never sees because it is titled or tagged in such an obscure way that only friends or family of the individual that posted the video ever see it. YouTube is sort of a triumph of the whole "tagging" movement in that sense.

For one of the more creative, charming, and pretty uses of YouTube (that I've seen so far at least), I highly suggest checking out In Bb (In B flat).

I think YouTube provides a lot of options for library usage. It could work for advertising and promotion, tutorials could be uploaded to a library channel, as could walkthroughs of how different features unique to a particular library function, librarians could upload their own videos of book reviews or discussions (for reader's advisory), and so on. There really are quite a lot of options, it all just depends on how much in the way of time and resources a library wishes to devote to it.

YouTube is great, but I see more and more professional-level, original, creative video content hosted by Vimeo all the time. They seem to take a very deliberate curatorial standpoint there, and it makes their content stand out from the relative jungle of YouTube.

Finally, I won't post it here, but here is a link to a video I uploaded / made of a scene from the movie Dark Star.