Wow, what an incredible site to play with! As you can tell from my previous post containing the Winston Churchill video, I am really enjoying this assignment!
I enjoyed watching Michael Stephens discuss why he believes books will never be obsolete, and that the human connection is the most important thing in the library, not all the new technical gadgets coming down the pike. The Calgary Public Library's Story Time was very cute, and the Harper College Library Tour was pretty funny. But the video "Now Your Library is Open Late Nights, Too" just made me cringe. This one was the personfication of my greatest worry - that we are trying to cater to the McDonald's Generation by spoonfeeding them (and in some cases digesting for them!) everything, right here, right NOW! Ugh! Okay, climbing off my soapbox...
I haven't found anything I really dislike about YouTube, probably because I'm still wowed by what I've found. The quality of content and production varies, but that's to be expected. I'm sure there's going to be objectionable content, too, depending on one's personal political correctness levels. (Watching Jackie Gleason plug Richard Nixon was a hoot, I will say!). And I'm sure I'll be finding tons of humorous and non-historical videos to watch, too. I plan to do a search for videos on cats next...
As far as libraries using YouTube - well, as I said, the ones listed in the assignment were pretty well done. I can see where they'd be useful in academic and specialized libraries for introducing collections and resources to new users. I suppose you could use them for the same purpose in the public library setting, but I think that's what WE are for (We as in Reference and Circulation Librarians). We're the first ones to interact with patrons, and I think they'd be more likely to talk with us than watch a YouTube video. I can see us updating our web page with other useful things before I can see spending staff time/library money producing a video, just my humble opinion. However, I do like the idea of in-house education using YouTube. We've watched them in the ProjectPlay format (and some of them have been quite simple and easy for me to follow, kinda like the Dummies books). I think Library System-produced in-house educational videos on various library-oriented topics (such as using the system-wide Learning Express program or the Gale Reference Products Software) would be a good use for this technology.
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