Oh dear, I nearly got lost on YouTube, but I pulled myself out. I cannot believe the extent of material available - every commercial, TV show, TV clip, movie trailer, music video, stranger acting like a spaz I never thought I'd see again is right at your fingertips. For years I've been waiting for Silver Spoons to come out on DVD, and now that a release date has been set for June, I find that I could have caught bits of it on YouTube. Like this very funny clip of Ricky (in drag) pretending to be Derek's date:
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Despite the seemingly frivolous nature of YouTube, it is an amazing resource that serves as an easily accessible film archive. Now I just wonder if they'll have to open up treatement centers for addicts.
Podcasts are cool in the abstract, but I find that I get twitchy as I watch them. I develop an instant case of internet A.D.D. and start wanting to move around, go outside, or take a look in the refrigerator. At a certain point I always feel like there should be some limit to the things we can do on a computer so we'll know when to turn them off. Obviously, the opposite is happening. I think the library could easily use podcasts to connect with patrons, (tutorials! author events! story times!) but how do we compete with everything else that's out there? How do we grab someone's attention and keep them coming back when the choices are endless? Why would someone want to watch our podcast over all the other options?
When I was little, technology was more novel. In the early 80's almost no one had a home computer, most people got about 5 TV channels, and only crazy-wealthy people and cops had car phones. In this primitive era (ha ha), it was so exciting to call the automated story line the library used to have (maybe Seattle Public?). They'd play a different recording every week or so, and it was always a thrill to call in and get the next one. I could do it myself since I didn't have to talk to a live person, and I felt very grown up. (I was maybe 4 or 5.) Imagine if kids could go onto wwww.kcls.org and watch storytime from home. We could definitely make this work to our advantage if we could just fish them in.
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