This weeks assignment was to explore YouTube and select a video worth including in my blog. For some reason I had a very difficult time selecting a video. I’ve used YouTube before, but usually to search for a song (“Baby Girl do you want to hear Oscar sing ‘I love trash?’ That was my favorite song as a little girl.”). I’ve never really “explored” the site. So, I scrolled through the subject areas, browsed, did some searches, but nothing jumped out at me. I wish that there was more indexing and that searches could be more focused.
I finally settled on doing a search on “newspapers.” For some reason I’ve been thinking a lot about the newspaper industry lately. Perhaps because a favorite local paper is in dire strights right now. I’m probably one of the few people left that still gets a paper delivered (weekends only though) and I’m a little worried about the future of journalism - the future of information. How will news look 20 years from now?
I was talking to someone today about how people who grew up with computers think differently, use their minds differently (probably part of the reason for the fall of the newspaper industry), and she asked “Is that bad?” My response was, “No, it’s just different.” That sentence probably applies here too.
Anyway, I came across this video in my search and thought that a retrospective look was worth considering. These people had no idea what they were getting into…
As for library applications. I think that using videos are a great way to communicate with and educate patrons. Particularly for those that are visual learners.
