Thing 16 – YouTube

 

From the outset I have always been a long time YouTube fan and user. I have used it for both personal and professional means. I find you can get lost within the program. You look up something in particular and then it shows you things of similar interest that you can go onto browse and view.

I am a huge fan of music so often will look up YouTube for old 80’s and 90’s music clips. It is what I like to call nostalgia J

I do love that YouTube is a video sharing website that allows its users to upload and share videos for others to access and view. It is a great forum for others to access from around the world. To inspire others and to allow creators to upload original content for people like me to view. Most people I know have at some stage or another accessed YouTube.

Like any site there will always be positives and negatives. I can see how YouTube could be a great educational tool. The library where I work have a YouTube channel.  “ACU Library Channel”

I personally think it’s a great platform to promote library services and programs. With the ability to use video formats it is an easy avenue for libraries to “showcase” how to use items such as borrowing a book, placing an ILL to library search tips.

I know there can be negatives to using a video sharing website, such as videos containing false or misleading information, or there may be offensive content, but personally I do think the positives easily outweigh the negatives. YouTube is easy to watch and to upload content, you kind find videos on almost any topic and the one I really love is the innovations involved when it comes to the music and entertainment industries. (See I do love my music)

Another aspect to YouTube that I like is that it can be a source of information regarding world events and or information regarding organisations or companies.

I also took the time to browse YouTube looking up videos from other libraries. There are many library related videos out there. I have included a few on my blog. The first two are work related whilst the 3^rd is a humorous library related clip I found from a University in the states.




 

http://www.youtube.com/user/ACULib?feature=watch