Week 8 - Do You YouTube?

Do you remember trying to watch video clips on the internet a few years ago? Postage stamp sized windows, jumpy images, and painfully slow loading seemed to be the standard features. Then PCs got better at displaying video, network connections sped up, and three guys from California decided to start a website with headquarters in a garage (the classic computer/dot com genesis). It's been just over four years since YouTube launched in November of 2005, but since then its influence, popularity, and infamy have been massive.

Within a year of the launch, YouTube had 100,000,000 clips being viewed daily, and 65,000 new videos being uploaded each day. A lot of people and companies took notice. Instead of fighting YouTube over copyright infringement, networks like NBC, CBS, and CNN began to see the value of having their shows promoted on the site and began developing original YouTube-only content. Google wanted a piece of the action and bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. To cap it off, TIME Magazine named the 2006 Person of the Year "You" and featured a YouTube style window and reflective cover.

It's not exagerating a great deal to say that you can find anything and everything on YouTube, from the stupid to the sublime, the bland to the brilliant, and the useful to the useless. Here's a few choice library related clips:

Your Life Work: The Librarian





Fucked Up Play at TRL





For this week's assignment, please do the following:

1. Go to YouTube and seek out a library or Toronto related video.

2. To the bottom right of the video window is button called Embed, which reveals a field with a some HTML coding in it. Click in this window and then copy the coding (Ctrl and C)

3. Open a new browser window, log into your Blogger account and start new post called Week 8.

4. In the composing window of a new post, there are two tabs in the upper right: Edit HTML and Compose. Click on the Edit HTML tab and then paste (Ctrl and V) the embed coding. You can then click on the Compose tab to write in your blog post as normal. Once you publish your post, the video will play directly from your blog.

5. Repeat steps 1-4 and add another video to your blog. Make a post about your YouTube thoughts and experiences. How could TPL use YouTube? Promotion? Explaining library services? Connecting with new patron groups?

When you're finished, send an e-mail to 23things@torontopubliclibrary.ca including the address of your blog.

Until next week....