You Tube

I watched a video on YouTube from the B.C. Courthouse on Finding Forms & Precedents, Part 2 - Library Catalogue. It illustrated the searching of the catalogue to find shareholder's agreements. I noted that beside the video on the right side box it indicated 2:18 (2 minutes and 18 seconds). I found it useful to know how long the video was before committing to watching it.

Almost all the videos under the search for Library were from a public service point of view. This was one of the few that was more instructional than a public service introduction to the library. The only use I could think of for use in our department (cataloguing) was to create a video of our tour - "Day in the life of a book". It would be best if the sections could be done in short segments so that you would not have to view the entire tour in one sitting. It would also allow a viewing and discussion approach. I wondered about using it for training of cataloguers. I think it would be difficult for several reasons. One is the time involved - both to create it and also to view it. The second would be to find an exact topic you wanted to review, I don't think would be easy. The topic would have to be something that does not change. You would not want to redo the work every time you had a tour. We do not have tours of the department that frequently to be worth while and I think by the time it you need the video again there would have been significant changes in the department that the video would have to be redone.

I noticed that Western Libraries had their welcoming to the library video on the first screen, having received a lot of hits.