My experience using YouTube and what do I think about this service?
One of the best things about YouTube is that we CAN get it at work. I selected the Adventures of Super Librarian to put up on my blog. It was easy to embed in this WordPress blog. This is a very engaging advertisement for a public library. I’m not so sure about showing a librarian shelving. I mean, really, don’t we still have some difficulty getting people to realize what we do requires a Masters level education? But other than that it’s a fun ad and would make a public library seem accessible. It’s probably not something we would use in the medical library, but it got me to thinking about other things we could do.
Do I see potential uses for Podcasting in the library? If so what and why?
I think that podcasting must be very new in libraries, and there must not be many examples you could give, to offer us the questionably effective podcasts at the University of Tennessee. It seemed very ineffective to me to be telling someone about your web page while they are looking at a what looks like poor approximations of your web site. A Camtasia type video with screenshots and flying arrows would have been more effective. I wonder if students download these podcasts to their video or audio iPods. That would tell us whether is is an effective way to communicate and whether students value them.
I can imagine putting out our weekly Medical Grand Rounds lectures for video iPods or watching on your computer. I think I will experiment with that. We now have them on DVDs. It makes me think with renewed energy about making some instructional Camtasia videos to put on our Web site.
