YouTube: Why the Internet Was Created!

Thank you, Al Gore! Thank you. If it hadn't been for your "inventing" the Internet we never could've enjoyed the amazingly fun and addictive video sharing site that is YouTube.

YouTube is great. This is a site which I've (unfortunately) spent many a happy hour playing around with and exploring, watching clips that range everywhere from classic '80s cartoons to funny puppet shows (more on that later) to insightful political propaganda to "classic" music videos. You can find just about anything here. Anything. Sure, as was mentioned in the Library 2.0 tutorial, quality may vary (both in content as well as presentation) but it's still a whole lot of fun to look around.

I really don't feel like I need to say much more. YouTube speaks for itself. I will say this though. I HAVE used YouTube before to help answer patron reference questions. On one particular occasion a patron approached me trying to find out the title of the book that Belle is reading during the opening musical sequence in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." After unsuccessfully looking through our Disney picture books as well as searching on Google (sorry Google), I tried trusty old YouTube and, sure enough, found that someone had posted the entire opening musical number. Unfortunately the book in question didn't actually have writing on the cover so I was unable to answer the patron's question, but I was at least able to go directly to the source and find that out. I thought that was pretty cool.

Oh, and thanks to YouTube I found my new favorite T.V. show, "The Office." If you haven't had a chance to see it you should definitely check it out. Very funny stuff! I decided to post a clip that relates to our preschool storytime. For four years and running Deanna and I have done a storytime on "Space," and without a doubt, one of our most memorable stortyime moments occurred the first time we acted out Ernie's song, "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon" (from Sesame Street.) So I've decided to post the original song, as seen on Sesame Street. Maybe one day the Library will start videotaping their storytimes, and then I could post our version of the same song. Wouldn't that be cool? So here it is - Sesame Street's very own Ernie singing "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon." Enjoy!