What? Ewe Tube?

Of course, since I'm a kid, I've been visiting YouTube for several years now. I've even got a YouTube profile, even though I've never uploaded anything, and the user who impresses me the most is Argentinian computer artist Nico Di Mattia, whose "speed paintings" of Scarlett Johansson and others are absolutely incredible.

I use YouTube fairly regularly. My new favorite band, The Wiyos, just put out their third album with my favorite song on it--and before the CD came out (and before the lead singer/washboardist kindly gave me a copy), the only way I could hear my favorite song (without being at a show) was by playing a video of one of their performances on YouTube. And here it is, The Wiyos performing "Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues" originally recorded by Blind Willie McTell:

As for other video hosting sites, I really like Ebaum's World, which is unfortunately blocked by the library's content filters. In the past, Ebaum's World has hosted videos from my college's sketch comedy troupe, Olde English. Ebaum's World was also the place where I first found the video of "Pinky, the Pet of the Day." (And evidently, whoever posted this version of it to YouTube also found it on Ebaum's World...)

Even though I know some about YouTube and have a profile myself, I decided to explore one of the library's recommended videos (by "recommended," I mean one of the ones linked in the "20 Things" blog), so I chose the time-lapse drive down the Richmond-Henrico Turnpike. It started playing and something about it reminded me of a guy I know who works with my friend Joel at the VCU/MCV Tompkins-McCaw Library. His name is Andrew, and he's got a cute little Mazda RX-8, which one day had a camcorder taped to its roof. Turns out, he had decided to record trips that he made around town, and was starting to post them on the Internet. Well! I looked to see who had posted the video, and it was none other than Andrew himself! Isn't that funny! What are the odds?!


Anyway, I kind of like YouTube because it offers videos of things that I haven't seen in years--Joel, for instance, just told me about finding clips from "Noozles" on YouTube--or it lets me introduce my friends to new things. In fact, I used YouTube to introduce my coworker Josh to "The Vicar of Dibley," which he found hysterically funny, even though he doesn't typically like British humor. (And I've used it to promote The Wiyos on my Facebook page, and I've shown The Wiyos' videos to my friends to entice them to come to shows with me.)

One of the weaknesses of YouTube, I think, is its search system. If someone hasn't tagged their video very well, or if you don't know the exact search terms, it could take a very long time to track down the video you want. For instance, if I were looking for clips from "Noozles" but I couldn't remember the title of the show or any of the characters' names (which I didn't until Joel reminded me of them), I would probably search for something like "koalas" and "animation" or maybe "koalas" and "tv show," and videos for "Noozles" would never appear. (One "Noozles" video appears in a search for "koalas" and "cartoon.")

I'm not sure I understand the question about features of the site being applied to library web sites. Are we talking about videos? Are we talking about video hosting? Are we talking about the channels and categories? Are we talking about the "community" aspect of YouTube? It would be cool if Pamunkey started some sort of community where patrons and staff could go to share book reviews and things like that--but that's not an idea inspired by YouTube...


And finally, just because I love this dude, I want to share one last favorite video:

Sweet, huh? In case you don't know anything about anything, that's the "Inspector Gadget" theme song. And yeah, that's right, he's beatboxing into his flute.