Contemplating YouTube and the Work of Folklore and Ethnology

Just a moment ago, I watched a short video produced by my colleague Jon Kay and his collaborators at Traditional Arts Indiana, the public folklore research and programming unit associated with the IU Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in which we both work. The film is a very nice introduction to John Schoolman, an (almost 100 year old) carver of walking sticks. It is a worthy token of a larger ethnographic project. What I want to observe out loud is the fact that my viewing of the clip was the 2699th. As open access advocates and research librarians could quickly note, very few scholarly works published in print-only or toll access venues every achieve such audiences. Congratulations to Jon and his team for making the valuable work of TAI available in a way that is clearly being valued by many stakeholders