Checking Out YouTube

YouTube as a Reference & Outreach Tool for Libraries

Peter Musser & Colleen Theisen

Intros

Peter Musser (he/him) is…

• YouTuber for past 7ish years
• Recent grad from UBC iSchool
• Queer
• US Navy veteran
• Having a birthday today! 🎂

Colleen Theisen (she/her) is…

• Mom
• Nerdfighter Oral Historian
• Collector of ‘90’s books that explain the internet to children
• Former host of UISpeccoll - Staxpeditions and If Books Could Talk

Let’s Acknowledge:

We’re on the lands of the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations, and this is relevant!

Big Questions

How are people using YouTube?

How are libraries using YouTube?

How could libraries use YouTube...

• … as a reference tool?
• … as an outreach tool?

What are the barriers?

How are people using YouTube?

• Entertainment
• Education
• Community (e.g. BookTubers)
• Video Repository*
• Advertising tool
• Etc...

How are libraries using YouTube?

• Supporting students and faculty in their use of YouTube
• Archives using YouTube as a repository
• One off outreach videos
• You tell us!

See also: Colburne & Haines (2012). Measuring Libraries’ Use of YouTube as a Promotional Tool: An Exploratory Study and Proposed Best Practices.

How could libraries use YouTube? -Reference

• How to
• Educational & “thinky” content
• Art and creative content
• Communities
• Booktube!

How could libraries use YouTube? -Outreach

• Create content for your community (announcements, promos, etc)
• Get creative with OA content
• Being a space that YouTubers can use for meet-ups & events
• A place for the community to create & upload content
• ???

How could libraries use YouTube? -Repository

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It’s free*, easy*, and where the people are*.

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What are libraries’ barriers to YouTube?

• COST: time, money, editing skills
• Identifying what is/isn’t reliable
• Worries about other adjacency to other content
• Mean people
• Lack of institutional support
• Privacy
• Not knowing the environment or conventions

How to get started?

• Find others in your institution who are interested. This could be other librarians, IT staff, but also pages and assistants!
• Consider existing resources: equipment, talent, support.
• What makes your institution or community special? Where’s your niche?

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Some handy resources

• YouTube Creator Academy: creatoracademy.youtube.com
• How to do Mobile Video (GDoc): �bit.ly/2B2VZEc
• Comment, Like, Subscribe, Check Out: www.petermusser.com/YTPL/
• The Music Librarian’s Guide to Video and Podcasting, by Katie Buehner and Andrew Justice

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Questions?

E.g. How to find talent?

When should we go big?

Why isn’t our channel succeeding?

How can I tell if our channel is succeeding?

Why YouTube and not Vimeo/Facebook/literally anything else?

How does this play into the bigger social media picture?

How do people even find things on YouTube?

Thank you. :)

pmusser@gmail.com

cmtheise@syr.edu

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