Alec

McNayr

Just saw that the 2008 Computers in Libraries conference (yes, everything has a conference) hosted their 2nd annual Info Tubey Awards, featuring great online YouTube videos used to market to their book-borrowing, magazine-reading, database-searching, group-room-reserving patrons (read: college students).

Some are really well done, and some are really well done… for librarians. Nevertheless, I applaud the effort libraries are putting forth these days to make their facilities relevant to a new generation of student needs.

Now Your Library is Open Late Night, Too!
QandANJ.org, New Jersey Library Network

Matt Herzberger of BlogHighEd pointed me to one of his favorite online video series in higher education, Real Nebraska.

The Obstacle

The University of Nebraska has about 23,000 students, which is about 10% of the entire population of Lincoln, NE. Big state school? Small midwestern college town? There are a lot of stereotypes flying through my head already. As a Nebraskan high schooler, your college options are increasing (growing online education options, competitive out-of-state rates, loopholes, etc.), so why would you consider UNL?

Since UNL has such an obvious battle to face, it would be easy for them to create some videos with the same lame scenes: students in lab coats (doing real science!), students working on computers, and super-engaged professors (what?). All this has been done in the past, to try to bolster the prospect’s view of “higher” academics.

The Videos

But UNL didn’t take that path, and instead features admissions counselor David Burge hosting funny, unusual, and thankfully honest depictions of life on campus at Nebraska.

The videos offer a wide range of content, such as “man on the street” interviews, guided tours around campus, weekly Grey’s Anatomy recaps by current students, and student band featurettes. Talk about unabashedly authentic!

Leveraging Online Video

The University of Nebraska admissions team gets big praise from me for their tactics surrounding the videos themselves:

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Many Universities (including my own) uses video to some extent to attract prospective students, but are usually very fearful of putting their content fully in the public domain.

After all, if your video is on YouTube, it can be copied and posted anywhere!

Most marketers would see this a big plus, but for some reason, most Universities are a lot vested in how prestigious they are. They get scared when their content (especially academic-related) has the possibility of making it to MySpace, Facebook, or — even worse — a blog!

I therefore applaud Vancouver Film School for not just dancing around new media and YouTube, but actively using it to showcase their students’ work.

More than that, they’re using YouTube as an active tool for recruitment. A perfect fit.