Thing 16: YouTube

So I haven't been a big YouTube user, but I have used it a bit. I'm amazed at how much free time people seem to have on their hands. All I can say is, they must not have small children. It's unfathomable to me how much stuff there is on You Tube about any topic you might be interested in. For example, I searched for Designing Women, my favorite television show of all time, and I found a video in which someone had produced an opening scene for the Magic School Bus using the Designing Women opening credits and music. Who knew...who cared?

What I am posting here is a video from SidsCardShop of my very favorite performer, Alison Krauss, singing my very favorite Dolly Parton song, Jolene. I wanted something that was of interest to me, something that I thought was worth sharing, and something that was relatively brief. This is all of those things, plus you get a glimpse of Dolly in the audience watching as well. What could be better? It's also timely as Alexis Grace was voted off of American Idol last night after singing Jolene during country week, but don't get me started about that!



Okay, obviously this didn't work properly since I can't see any actual video, just a YouTube frame with nothing in it. I will have to work on it more later and see if I can figure it out.

Well, I see it works from this computer. It was apparently just the computer that I was working on earlier that didn't actually show the video, just the frame. So, Thing 16...accomplished!

Thing 15: Rollyo

I had never before heard of Rollyo, so this Thing was completely new to me.  I like the concept, and I can see it having uses both personally (for some people, although, not so much for me) and in libraries.  In libraries, I think this might be especially useful for local and regional information, for things like science fair and history fair projects, and for other specific projects that apply to a group of people.

I tried the Rollyo search on public domain e-books and searched for some poetry by A.E. Housman, particularly To an Athlete Dying Young and With Rue My Heart Is Laden.  I was able to find these and other Housman poetry easily with just one quick search.  Of course, I Googled both of these poems and the first hit on both was the same bartleby.com hit that I got using Rollyo, but I suppose there’s less extraneous information using Rollyo if you’re simply looking for the text and not things like commentary or criticism.

Next I registered and created my own search for all things Dolly Parton.  There are several websites out there devoted to Dolly, her music and her business ventures.  I included in my search, the “official” website of Dolly Parton, Dolly Parton On-Line, Dolly’s fan club website, Dollymania (“the online Dolly Parton Newsmagazine”), the Dollywood theme park website, and the website for Dolly’s Imagination Library program.  So, if you’ve been wondering when 9 to 5: The Musical opens on Broadway, and the answer has been eluding you, try my search and see if it helps.