Digital Library Center Blog | UF

The Library of Congress has announced that they’re now loading videos to YouTube. They’ve already loaded a ton of videos and they plan to load many more, seeing YouTube as a parallel to their successful and ongoing Flickr project. Check out their wonderful and ever-increasing number of videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/LibraryOfCongress.

Everyone benefits from greater access and greater opportunities for serendipity. Imagine all the people who will be browsing or searching YouTube for one video and finding others from the Library of Congress! This is a great learning, teaching, and sharing opportunity and that’s also why the UF Libraries also have YouTube and Flickr accounts. Even as a drastically smaller contributor, it’s nice to be participating in the same wonderful process with the massive and monumental Library of Congress.

Thanks go to the Library of Congress for working so diligently to preserve and make materials accessible. Also, thanks go to the Library of Congress for further validating the use of “fun” technologies/services like YouTube and Flickr for real work and as part of the work of libraries everywhere that work to make information, learning, thinking, and the entire process of inquiry fun!

Well maybe not featured, but at least mentioned in the wiki for a graduate library science course (LIS 5313) at Florida State University. It’s great to get noticed, but it’s far better and more important to have that recognition become a resource that the UF Libraries and others can use in deciding and refining how to best use resources like YouTube to support existing projects and needs.

The videos on the UF Libraries YouTube Channel are all available in the UF Digital Collections, but the UF Libraries’ YouTube Channel has links to friends in UF News Bureau and the USF Libraries, so it’s worth checking out for the social network and the videos!