Trying not to get distracted on YouTube

I have been so looking forward to these things as I am a big fan of both podcasts and  YouTube - although strictly in the distraction/time wasting/laughing until I have a stitch sense. rather than with my 'might be useful for libraries' hat on!

I used to have a long commute and the podcasts of various comedians - Jon Richardson, Adam and Joe and David Mitchell - which were a brilliant distraction as well as an excellent way to see the strange looks you get on trains if you giggle randomly in public places.

I have also been interested in the potential of pre-downloadable podcast guides to museums or places - although I have to say I've never actually been organised enough to download one to my ipod before visiting! The British Library has something like this for their collections. I can see how a podcast guide to a library could be useful - say if someone misses a tour they could walk round the library whilst listening to the audio guide. Although I'm not sure how organised users would be about actually downloading them. It is just another way of getting information across which might appeal to people more than other methods, and as such is worth experimenting with.

I think YouTube could have more potential for libraries simply because it is more engaging than podcasts - also YouTube is more thoroughly web-based, whereas I think podcasts are often downloaded (although of course you can listen online too) - this means a library guide video, for example, could be accessed anywhere with an internet connection - in the library on joining, in a user education session, or from home. And when done well library videos can be both entertaining and informative. Like this one:

Visual distraction

Flickr is the kind of thing that I can accidentally spend hours on - I get slightly addicted to looking up places I know, or events I've been to. I like the fact that it almost acts as a visual Twitter, although not quite so up the moment, getting many different perspectives on large events if people are kind enough to upload pictures and then tag them. You can find such specific images on there - you can see my childhood home in the distance here for example:

With thanks to orangeaurochs.

There were even some images of paternoster lifts. My department at university had to be reached by a paternoster, which always used to break down on essay deadline days. There are a surprising number of lift-fanciers out there posting (working) paternoster videos on YouTube. I was pleased to see on Flickr that the one in Sheffield has similar technical problems to 'my' paternoster.

With thanks to iwouldstay.

Saying all this, however, I do think there are better ways of sharing pictures without the collective, social, elements of Flickr. I know Facebook has been mentioned by a lot of Cam23 people as the most effective way of sharing photos online, and I do certainly use this to upload photos of people who are also on Facebook. I prefer Photobucket or Picasa though if I want to show albums - with less of the community/tagging available on Flickr - to people without Facebook accounts or that contain pictures of no interest to my Facebook friends.

Where Flickr becomes invaluable to libraries though is in the simple copyright rules of the Creative Commons agreement. I hadn't come across the Creative Commons element of Flickr before and it is really useful to have such a large source of copyright friendly images - I can imagine when doing presentations, user education or library marketing materials in the future it will be a really handy resource.