I have always seen YouTube as being fun thing rather than a useful thing. My experience of it comes mainly from the television show Friday night download that was showing on channel 10 last year. In it, there were various YouTube clips of wacky and hilarious stunts.
The useful applications of Youtube are obvious. You could have clips that give new members a tour of the library or new employees an introduction to their job. I know in my library there are a lot of things I do, such as showing people how to research the history of their homes, that are repetitious and could be easily made into a short YouTube video for people to watch.You could have clips of people giving book reviews or of book group discussions.
My library would benefit by videoing book talks by authors. I know a lot of people cannot get to the library when the book talks are held, as it's during office hours. The clips could be accessible on our website over the internet. I've heard it suggested that we could do our Oral history things on video. We could even call it something like VidHist or FuddyDuddyHistory (remember you heard the term coined first on my website).
There must be loads more things you could do if the technology is cheap and accessible enough.
This last thing is a YouTube clip I thought was funny. Cheerio.
........................................................Bugger I can't get it to download. I'll do it next week.
