Have some fun. Put yourself out into the spaces we all talk about: YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, blogs, etc. But beware: someone will eventually pull the cat's bum face on you.
We've all seen what I'm talking about and the video above from MoMA is just the latest one I've seen. MoMA appear to have many of these short entertaining clips exposing the sacred turf and processes behind museums and galleries. Good on them I say.
Then there's the UofW Librarians Do Gaga video being queried here in The Huffington Post. It also has drawn some scorn from several library bloggers and tweeters for "sending out the wrong message" and for trying to be "cool". Well to them I say "BAH, HUMBUG!" I don't think it has a deep and meaningful message - who cares if the words aren't completely in accord with what you believe to be the truth about academic libraries. Who knows anyway? The lyrics had to fit in with the bloody music. And I really don't think they are trying to be cool at all. They look obviously daggy and a range of folk of all ages from the library were included. They are just having fun and joining in on one of the world's most popular web sites. We should be praising them and following their example. It is a long leap forward from the library-babble and institutional voices that dominated our websites not so long ago. Initiatives like these personalise our web presence from the inside out. That is just as important as allowing our users to personalise them from without.
What UofW and MoMA are doing is not that far removed from the very popular NLA Thriller clip that has now had over 72,000 views. We should all be jealous that we didn't have the guts, initiative, energy and imagination to try it first.
