Some random thoughts on video #BibComm now that the first “season” of #BiteSizedBookHistory is in the can...

Starting with audience reach: I made these videos with beginners in mind, and with the exception of a few instances that I heard about them being used in class materials, I have NO IDEA how successful I was at hitting that audience

YouTube is a different platform from Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook... in some ways it’s kind of similar to Instagram in that people don’t retweet/blog/share posts from others, it’s all in the likes and comments

This means that it’s harder to “spontaneously” reach an audience through random social nodes of users, unless YouTube promotes your video based on Mysterious Algorithms

Also, to my knowledge, there’s no way to see who’s following you, adding to the general feeling of blindness about your audience. Likes and comments are really all you’ve got!

Someone on Instagram suggested I link the videos on Reddit, which I had never used before... I am, so far, very much not a fan. It seems EXTREMELY insular

I *could* promote the series on r/rarebooks or r/bookcollectors, but that gets back to the key issue with audience reach: these are not new audiences, these are book echochambers

Which are great, for some things! Networks like those boards, #LibraryTwitter, and professional social networking are how weird, obscure bibliographic connections are made

But my PERSONAL goal is to reach audiences OUTSIDE the traditional venues of bibliographic knowledge exchange; that’s what #Bibcomm is about for me. And I have no idea how successful I was

I’ll probably come back to this thread with more reflections tomorrow. I’m proud of what I made, and I will make more, I just feel like something’s missing

I’m going to put up my first (of several) bookshelf tour videos tomorrow, so we’ll see how those go! They’re SO much easier to edit

Back at it again with this thread, now to talk logistics of making a video series about books when all the libraries are closed

So, I am a compulsive picture-taker, always have been. I know a lot of academics/library/library-adjacent folks have talked about having a GAJILLION photos of books on their phone to look back on, I think there was even a Folger Collation post about it