I noticed this interesting juxtaposition of the difference in the way the Democratic and Republican parties are approaching technology at campaign events.
The Arizona Star reported that the GOP wanted to prevent any attendees of a Tucson fundraiser from recording the event, out of fear of what might show up on YouTube. Bush himself asked the attendees to turn off all recording devices, and was quoted as saying
I don’t know a lot about technology…but I do know about YouTube.
On the other hand, an email from the Obama campaign goes in the exact opposite direction. The email mentioned an upcoming rally in Massachusetts on August 4th (Obama’s birthday, incidentally), and read in part:
…remember to bring your camera and snap a few photos! You can share them with us at eventsforobama@gmail.com. We’ll start posting photos soon!
Not that there is any one right way to approach technology, but I did find this contrast telling. The Bush Administration has a long reputation of trying to suppress and control information and keep things behind closed doors, whereas the Obama campaign has embraced modern technology and has put effort into learning it to use it to their advantage.
Politics is politics, but I am all for being encouraged to participate. Besides, I like misunderstanding or fear.
This is a reference question I’ve been holding onto for awhile, hoping I’d have an answer to share. I don’t, so now I’m hoping someone else might.
A patron came to the desk asking for help with YouTube. He’s one of our regulars, and has a bit of a compulsive personality. He’s also a big fan of The Doors: he’s working on a book, buys whatever merchandise he can from eBay, and watches any related video on YouTube - or rather, tries to.
One day, he came to the desk and said:
When I search for “the doors” on YouTube, there are over 79,000 videos. However, It only shows the first 50 pages of search results, which is only the first 500 videos. How can I watch the rest?
I had never clicked this far into any search returns in my life. So I tried it out, and sure enough, he was right. I played a bit, but couldn’t find any way to get past this barrier to the rest of the videos.
I searched their Help Center with no success, and so sent in the question via their Contact Form. I also searched the general internet, but couldn’t find anything relating to this issue.
This was on April 25th, 2008. So far, I haven’t heard anything back from YouTube or Google. I resubmitted the question a couple weeks later, but again, no response.
I’ve played with this search limit again recently, and it looks like now YouTube cuts off the returned videos in the 540’s, which is on page 28. The pagination shows out to page 31, and implies there is more, but when you click beyond page 28 the pagination and video numbering starts over at 1.
I can understand the technical limitations and the necessity of an upper cap on returned search matches. But with no explanation or message that there is a limit, and this confusing/resetting pagination, this patron feels YouTube is teasing him personally, and cheating him out of these other 78,500+ videos.
Does anyone have an answer I can pass on to the patron? Thanks.
A librarian in Maine recently posted to MELIBS-L that one of their local patrons was a finalist for the 2008 StoryTubes contest. I had never heard of this contest, but I like projects where patrons get involved, so I checked it out. I loved it.
Kids make a video of themselves reviewing a book on a particular theme (that week’s was “Facts, Fads and Phenoms”) and submit it to StoryTubes. Finalists get posted on the website (via YouTube), website visitors vote, and four winner win $500 in books (and their sponsoring school or library receives $1,000 in books).
This year’s contest is winding down, and I’m sorry I missed it. It’s sponsored by publishers and libraries, and the finalist videos are great (my two favorite are below, and more here).
But even outside this contest, I think this would be a fun thing to do in the library. All it would take is a basic digital camera and a YouTube account, and I can see parents, kids and librarians getting really into it. It gives kids an opportunity to create, and in a public way. You always hear the phrase, “it’ll be something to tell your grandkids about.” This gives kids something to be proud of and tell their grandparents about.
Your Chickens: A Kids Guide to Raising and Showing
One of our regular patrons has a radio show on a local station. He found some copyright-free songs on YouTube, and wanted to know how he could record them to play on his show.
However, most of the usual ways require more access to the computer than we allow the public to have. Patrons cannot install software or get to Windows Sound Recorder, so he wanted something easier.
An internet search lead us to the website vixy.net, which is exactly what he wanted. Enter the url of the online video you’d like to record, choose the output file type (mp3 is an option), click start, wait, and then download the audio file. Nice.
The system is still in beta, and lists right on their homepage some of the errors you might encounter (after working with it awhile, the patron said he got an error on about one in three attempts). But when it works, it works, and it gave the patron exactly what he was looking for - mp3 files he could save to his flash drive.
But let me leave you with what I told him: just because something is possible doesn’t mean it is legal. It is up to you to check to make sure the copyright on published work allows for this type of recording.
I noticed this interesting juxtaposition of the difference in the way the Democratic and Republican parties are approaching technology at campaign events.
One of our regular patrons has a radio show on a local station. He found some copyright-free songs on YouTube, and wanted to know how he could record them to play on his show.
