A lot has changed in two and a half years. In 2004, Michael Stephens, Bob, and I tried to contact Warner Brothers to get permission to post the St. Joseph County Public Library's staff in-service day video because it uses Madonna's song "Ray of Light" as its soundtrack. We never did get a response from them, and the idea fell by the wayside.

In 2006, however, online culture (culture in general, really) has changed with the advent of user-generated content sites like You Tube, and I am thrilled to note that today, Michael posted the video for everyone to see! Not only are we seeing a lot more mashups of this type of content, but now, acknowledging that the "genie is out of the bottle," Warner Brothers is officially licensing their content for use in user-generated video.

This also shows the power of Web 2.0 and how viral it is (libraries really need to figure out how to join in and become viral). I have a DVD copy of the video that I show to people when I can, usually a handful of them at most when we can gather in a room. In fact, right now John Chrastka has my copy because my laptop doesn't have a DVD decoder on it so I couldn't show it to him on my computer and he had to take it to his. Talk about sneakernet....

Now that the video is on YouTube, though, I can just point the whole world to it, and everyone can see it and be inspired by it. Every library in the world can see it now at no bandwidth cost to SJCPL, no physical media cost for more copies of the DVD, and no more limitation on simultaneous use. Plus, it's a great plug for Madonna's song.

What does this tell you about the future of online video in the context of libraries?

Two years in internet time is an eternity, but look at what a difference it makes.

Go watch the video - it's truly incredible! It totally rocks, and it does everything I talk about in my presentations - it humanizes the library, shows the vibrancy of it, shows off the staff and what it takes to keep things going, and more. Now this video does that out where the users are, out where everyone can see the power of it!