YouTube- Soapbox for Everyman

By the title of my post you can probably guess that I like You Tube as a tool for every day people to be heard. There are some in the library community that believe that this is a bad thing. They think that the lack of control will lead to a dumbing down of society and that uncontrolled sites such as blogs, wikis and I would include YouTube can’t be trusted because there is no peer review process.

To me this smacks of elitism. From a librarian’s point of view, does it make the job harder? Yeah it does. But hey that is why librarians are paid the big bucks (our friends in Marathon County excluded. Seriously though just because something makes life more difficult does not mean it is bad. Living outside of your parent’s home can be difficult but that does not make it a bad thing – it is what it is.

In exchange for this horrible torrent of uncontrolled text and video we points of view from people, some even in our own community, that we would not have heard before. Let’s face it, I would not be typing this unless I had this format opened to me on which to air my opinion. The nice thing for you is that you do not have to buy any of what I am selling. The bonus for both of us is that we get to avoid that awkward moment when I realize that not only are you not buying what I am selling but that you are praying to a higher power that my little shop of opinions goes out of business, soon, before I can type another line.

Oh yeah, this blog is free so I don’t have to worry about going out of business.

Okay, I guess I am supposed to talk about YouTube here. I did watch the videos. I liked Harper College Library one a lot. I always like to see libraries trying to break down the shusher image. I also like the Conan the Librarian video, there are some days with some patrons I could really use the sword of his.

In regard to videos I have seen on YouTube I would recommend three of them to anyone with a sense of humor (special note: if you don’t find these as amusing as I did it does not necessarily mean you lack aforementioned sense of humor). The first one is a great, and funny example of social commentary that we would never have seen before the digital age. The second is for people that have ever spent too much time in playing video games. And the third is for the Harry Potter fans out there (hopefully JK Rolling will not send Google the cease and desist order on this one).

Enjoy.