Saturday, September 25, 2010
Youtube and Libraries
This article could not have come at a better time for me. I am beginning my practicum in a high school library on October 4, and my cooperating teacher librarian asked me if there were any special projects I wanted to work on while I was there. I told her I was hoping to create a more high profile Web presence for the library--a Facebook page or Twitter account, perhaps. She was very reluctant to use social networking in the library, so I was trying to find some other way to reach the students that would be relevant. This may be the way to go. They have a production class at the library. Perhaps they could create "commercials" for the library that we could post on Youtube. I did send the link to this article to my CTL. I hope she's receptive to the idea.
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I almost mentioned schools in my post about this article. Young people may be inclined to thinking of the library as a boring place for old people and a tool like YouTube might encourage them to view it differently and to recognize what the library has to offer them.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I can understand why your CTL would be reluctant to use social networking tools to promote library services, I think it a really valuable asset. YouTube, as a social networking tool, seems a little less personal and a bit more controlled, but it has a distinctly social component. Perhaps if you presented her with a few examples of library facebook pages or twitter feeds, you could highlight how valuable a resource these tools are. For instance, I know people who don't listen to the news, but they are alarmingly up to speed when it comes to their friends status updates. Being able to provide information in a format that people are concerned with is half the battle. It allows libraries to provide information in a place where people are actually looking for it.
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