#20 Down the Tube

Yet more byways in which to lose oneself.

I spent more time than I had on YouTube. I was looking for a genuinely funny video about libraries and chose this one for what has to be the most morale boosting line for librarians battling with 2.0 = "Dewey is like Google for smart people".
Another close contender was "The Professional Librarian" dealing with correct returns policy. Also worth a look are the YouTube Salute to librarians and clips from Monty Python and Mary Hartman.
Of course there are some serious videos where libraries are using YouTube for promotional or training purposes that we could adapt and adopt. I would especially like to explore offering a YouTube clip on the catalogue that would engage users with our databases so they could find the resources they wanted to when they really needed them.
Something else that I discovered whilst doing this exercise - YouTube has an amazing diversity of material. I hadn't really expected that it could also be such a powerful information repository, despite its searching limitations. Quite by chance in a search for "London" and "library", I came across some footage related to concentration camps during the second world war. My father was a victim of several so I started looking for some shots of any of his camps in what I suppose is a continuing search of mine to make up for the conversations I never had with him whilst he was alive. I was marvelling at the depth of resources when I came across some very powerful footage that was accompanied by a glorious Bach cantata and I realised that this clip was actually a celebration or worse of the Holocaust. This was very chilling and I ceased these explorations.

So moving right along and nothing to do with libraries- this clip is for other baby boomers who started watching television in the late fifties.