Podcasting and YouTube

I have been looking at videos on YouTube for a few years now and to be honest I never considered that it could be a useful tool for libraries. I've always looked at music videos and silly presentations that we did at school. It's good that anyone can shoot their own videos and upload them, but you can get an awful lot of tat. But I think it's the same for most user-generated content on the internet.

I think YouTube could be a really useful tool for libraries. The ability to upload presentations and tours of the library would be handy to help students familiarise themselves with a new system, although there could be a bit of overlap if you already have similar things uploaded onto sites such as Flickr and Slideshare. It's probably just a case of finding what works best for you though.

Podcasting is something that I've always meant to look into a bit more. I know my dad has managed to download quite a few podcasts to take on holiday with him, but I've just never got round to it. I'm not sure if it's something that would be that useful to us as a library, although I'm sure it works well for other larger libraries. I'm just not that sure how we would use it. It's good to spread the message and make sure information is available to as wide an audience as possible, but you could spend so much time making presentations and podcasts that you end up with no time for your readers.