Saturday, May 19, 2007

For my boys... WOW music video

While preparing previous post on citing YouTube videos, I was going to include this one as an example of one that did not have production credit... but then I found it did ... so it isn't needed there, but I can't NOT mention it here.

The video: World of Warcraft Big Blue Dress

was added to YouTube by Phenixxx. It does not contain any claim in-video or description as being created by Phenixxx, Credit in the closing scenes (not explained whether for music/video or both):
Cranius
"Big Blue Dress"
TCO
Destromath

As it happens, further research suggests that Cranius is also responsible for the video and music, and apparently vocal and character performance too. I'm curious, though I don't play the game myself, about the source of the dwarf back-up singers: are they Cranius-alts composited, or friends/guild members?

So surely the reference for this would be:

Cranius. (2006). Big Blue Dress [music video]. Retrieved May 18, 2007 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqO7zEWu0W0

How to cite a YouTube video in APA style

UPDATED: 5 March 2010

More recently a googler landed here from the query: ...directly quoting from youtube apa...


My original post did not contain a significant point for directly quoting: location reference.
{Note: A location reference would also be desirable if paraphrasing a point that does not represent the whole of the cited work.}


In APA style a location reference is included with the in-text citation rather than in the reference list: (Author, year, location) or Author stated (Year, location).
To locate a quote within a video I would use a time reference, eg:

"No monkeys were harmed in the making of this film" (Booth, 2006, 3:36)
Back to original post with minor edits:

I apologise if this page took a while to load, I love these videos because my boys love World of Warcraft.

I haven't really had occasion to need to cite a video myself, but as MyBlogLog tells me that visitors have browsed by my 'cite-a-blog' and 'cite-a-blog-comment' posts from google searches seeking APA style citation guidance for youtube videos, I've been wondering...

First, to cite a video seems on the surface quite simple:
  • title would be the video title [from the YouTube page only if there is no titling within the video itself],
  • as an electronic source there would be 'Retrieved -date- from URL' [since 6th edition, retrieval date not required unless source is likely to be changed] and 
  • author would be the producer of the video if known... which begs another question: identifying the producer. However for now, one calls to mind that
  • APA citation style for audiovisual media varies from print material in that the function of the originator or primary contributors is designated in parentheses, and the nature of the work in brackets after the title (American Psychological Association [APA], 2001, p. ?)... which brings to mind the music video which begs another question (if one's commentary refers to the music content is the reference to the song writer and if relevant performer?; and if one's commentary refers to the visual content is the reference to the video producer?; or does one in any case reference both?)

Back to identifying the producer:
  1. If the video includes an appropriate credit - great use that, (although one still has those questions about specific reference to either music or video content in music video).
  2. Many YouTube videos do not have credits, and there is a distinct possibility that people might post videos they did not create, such as the Slingshot Fun video in McConnell Library's example (McConnell Library, 2007) so that it might be best not to attribute to the YouTube member who posted it [and in this case cite and reference by the title], however:
  3. The personal web-cam style videos, apparently home-made by the one who posts them to YouTube - can they be credited to that one? If 'apparently' is not enough, what if the video's description contains a claim of creation? [I think if you believe the one who uploaded made the video, then cite their screen-name if they don't provide a proper name]
  4. What then about YouTube's "director" videos?
Perhaps I should test some... what about ....

Credit given in video:




If I comment upon Mike Spiff Booth's video content... maybe:
Apparently no monkeys were harmed in the making of Mike Spiff Booth's video Code Monkey (2006, 3:36).
to list in the reference list:
Booth, M. S. (Producer). (2006, September 23) Code Monkey [music video]. Retrieved May 18, 2007 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA

however, would I cite songwriter and video producer both if I wrote something like:
The way Mike Spiff Booth shows it (Coulter & Booth, 2006) one is left uncertain whether Code Monkey gets the girl or just imagines he does "one day".
with a reference:
Coulter, J. (Songwriter & Performer) & Booth, M. S. (Videoproducer). (2006). Code Monkey [music video]. Retrieved May 18, 2007 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA

Credit/responsibility appearing to belong to YouTube member/poster:

in text:
...when tipping in a loose page, only a minute amount of pva is required (molly1216, 2006, 0:17)...

Reference:
molly1216. (2003). How to tip in a loose page [video]. Retrieved May 18, 2007 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD457Dr1jx0

But what about characters:

Might one do this?
in text:
According to Ol'Chumbucket and Cap'n Slappy (2003, 0:47) "Avast" means 'stand and give attention'.
Reference:
Ol'Chumbucket & Cap'n Slappy. (2003). Talk Like a Pirate Day: The Five A's [video]. Retrieved May 18, 2007 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cKCkbWDGwE

References

American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Americal Psychological Association.
McConnell Library, Radford University. (2007, March 1). Citation Style Guides. Retrieved May 18, 2007 from http://lib.radford.edu/Resources/handouts/styleguides.asp#websiteno

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Sunset on Lake Colac


Sunset on Lake Colac 16
Originally uploaded by moonflowerdragon.

On our way to visit my sister in Colac, my oldest son "Cricket" said "Take a look at the sunset on Lake Colac Mum, you'll want to take a photo". I ended up taking a series ... I LOVE a digital camera!

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Cotton-eye Joe

♫ Where did you come from? Where did you go? ♫
Remember the Rednex lyrics?

Completely irrelevant but the above line has been repeating through my mind when a result in an 'any' Pagebull search on my screenname



reminded me to check out MyBlogLog to see whether anyone has visited my blog lately.



Sure'nuff some few had! <-giggle,clap-> And it was entertaining to see where visitors had come from and where they went
  • google searches for:
    • supunna picta (then followed my link to USQ)
    • citing YouTube (no, I haven't answered that yet, but I'm still planning to work it out UPDATE: yes, I've made a few guesses)
    • unschooler teen books (fairly sure my collation of library stuff wouldn't have answered that search)
    • "with that moon language"
    • pageflakes protopages netvibes
    • fun mmorpgs (did my story about my first experience help?)
  • eclecticlibrary even tagged my posts on citing blog posts & comments - is eclectic library actually Morgan of librariesinteract.info?
That was fun. I don't appear to get enough visits to warrant a pro account with MyBlogLog though I have preliminary approval from the boys to do so whenever I like because they enjoyed my excitement about my blog being visited!

One guesses one has really contributed when...

one's post is included in librariesinteract.info's monthly roundup: this month in Australian library blogland! Thanks Morgan.



Funnily enough, I didn't notice that when it would have popped up in my rss feed, I only discovered it after experimenting with the visual search engine Pagebull, which looks like it could be immensely valuable for certain types of visual learners if the search ?algorithms? are as rigorous as we expect from textual engines. Not that I have the knowledge of such to compare, or guess whether it would be or not, just meaning to comment that while screenshots are great fun (and colourful) most important will still be relevance of results, with both it would seem to be a really good idea.



(thanks to Wanderings of a Librarian for mentioning Pagebull)

The Clever Country - Dying of Thirst

When Graham Bates was telling me about his interesting idea to solve Victoria's water crisis by colocating a thermal multi-effect distillation desalination plant at Portland Aluminium to make use of their waste heat to produce maybe 200 megalitres a day, I thought that a blog might be a great way to promote the idea.

A blog could also be a way to explore and develop such ideas, but Graham is still a little "computer1.0" (you know offline office tools ;) ) so he'd already fleshed it out into a documented concept paper. While I could cut and paste its sections into blog posts and link them together carefully, it wasn't going to be efficient for Graham's editing processes.

We experimented with Zohowriter, Thinkfree and Googledocs to get his concept paper online. Only Zohowriter included his footnotes, though it moved them from original page-bottoms to end of document. None of them completely retained his original formatting, and we did have to reconfigure the images, and convert a textbox to a table in Zohowriter. We discovered that Thinkfree would publish a pdf for others to view, although we couldn't upload a pdf there and Thinkfree lost the footnotes, so while ideal in the former respect, it became useless as a result of the latter. If anyone knows a free and easy-to-use file store and share site (that allows upload and public access of pdfs) please tell me.

I still thought that a blog would be useful for exposure, but I didn't get to it right away. With the media attention after the Glenelg Shire's Council meeting last week it became potentially even more useful an idea, so we sketched it up this week. Unfortunately someone who hasn't actually done anything with it has already tied up the preferred blogtitle, so Graham went with...

Are We the Clever Country?

Update: 16 June 2007

We finally solved the problem: I don't remember how we found it but Scribd has done the job in a wonderful way.