Thing #16 YouTube

What did you like or dislike about the sites you explored?
When I first started watching these videos years ago they were funny, but had no real value to them. As time has passed though some of them became more political and socially relevant. Many are still funny, but humor is a good way to get a point across.

I chose a couple of videos that made me think.







Why did you choose the video that you did?
I saw the piece on laughing yoga on Oprah and thought it was interesting.

The second video a came from a friend of mine who told me that they did this at her Church and said it was so powerful it gave her "chill bumps." She said some other Churches had done it and posted it on the web so I seached under cardboard testimony and came up with a few. This was my favorite.

Can you see any ways to use video--YouTube or other sites--on your library Web site?
I am a pretty serious minded person, but I think humor is a good thing. It relieves stress. (Who didn't like watching the dancing guy on the Great Wall?) I also know there are a range of videos out there that are not just the joke of the day kind of thing.

A YA librarian just told me she is planning a summer program for teens to make their own videos to post. I think that program will have a lot of interest. I think kids today are tired of being advertised to, they would rather create their own messages than be force fed them by Madison Ave. Video sites will play a big part in their generation.

I found a cool site at archive.org which is a 501c3 that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections.

Most of the collection is scholarly, but I found the cartoon vault! I found this Casper the Ghost cartoon from 1948 entitled Caspar The Friendly Ghost in There's Good Boos Tonight. The site also had Mighty Mouse, Betty Boop, Felix the Cat. The collection also includes classics such as Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, Porky Pig, The Three Stooges, and others.