Podcasts and YouTube

I know, this is out of order ... But I'm struggling to find time to try to get to grips with Zotero, and so I'm skipping ahead to something that I find a little easier to assess, in the hope that I can still finish this programme by 27 August. I am finding it harder and harder to motivate myself to look at yet another Thing, especially as I have yet to find one about which I can be wholeheartedly positive, but having got myself this far, I would like to finish.

Podcasting? [my caption]

Image by Darwin Bell (from Flickr, under Creative Commons)

I guess that if I had my own computer or an iPod or MP3 player, I would make some use of podcasts in a leisure context. I listen to quite a lot of Radio 4, and am sometimes frustrated by missing programmes that are also available as a podcast at their scheduled time on air. But I soon forget about them, and if it was really an issue for me, I would probably acquire the relevant equipment. I very occasionally use the public library computers to listen to something that has been trailed, and sounds particularly interesting. Not having the relevant equipment is a bar to successful usage, and assuming that everyone will have it, a trap to be avoided.

I rarely use YouTube, not having my own computer, and the one that I have got access to at work having no sound. The times that I have tried to find things on it, I've got very frustrated by the multitude of hits that I've received, and the poor quality of many of the results, even when they have appeared to be relevant. Amateur filming, grainy and jerky, quite often. As with Flickr and Slideshare, sifting through the sand for the diamonds is something which has to be factored in. I wouldn't have thought to look for library-related videos on YouTube, though I now know that there are some.

I have struggled to do some of this Thing properly, as I have no sound on my work computer, and I simply don't have time to go to the public library and try to find a computer with headphones. Podcasts with no visuals are impossible, though I am sure that some of them were interesting (I couldn't get the British Library ones - they seemed to be mis-linked to the University of Aberdeen?). Watching videos with no sound is not the best way of assessing quality. Or perhaps it is? You notice more how hammy the acting is that way. I'm afraid that I found quite a lot of the library YouTube videos that I watched (but didn't hear) a bit cringeworthy, and patronising. Those two being pushed around on the trolley, one of them waving an endless supply of mugs (do you really want your users to think that riding on the trolleys or drinking coffee in the library is OK?) ... I think that I was glad to have no sound for the Gaga librarians. That seemed especially embarrassing. Of course, I am not the target audience - students maybe find them more appealing - but I wouldn't want some of them advertising my library services, and I suspect that my Libraries Committee would agree. Then again, maybe I'm just far too serious and square.

I started to write a tongue-in-cheek piece about what I could have learned from watching some of these videos, but I wasn't sure that it would be to the point.

I could see a well-judged, and well-produced video or podcast on a library website being a good way to get information to users who can't make live tours or get into the library when it is staffed, and actually talk to the staff. However, producing such a thing would be beyond my resources and talents, I fear, and I think that it is better not to have them than have bad ones. I would not associate a library video with YouTube, which, as with a number of other Things, still seems to have largely social uses and connections, not professional ones.

I know, I know, libraries are supposed to be breaking into the social networking revolution and using it to promote themselves, and I should be joining in.