Youtube EDU - Google as a world saver or world rule

A few weeks ago the new gateway to lectures, campus-tours, interviews with researches of more than 100 well-known universities and colleges was set up: Youtube EDU. Until now it consists only of videos of american institutions.
As I discovered Youtube is a subsidiary of Google. It's suspect to me that the division which realized or promote it is called "Happy learning" (?!). This reminds me of motivational trainings for managers.


Google's mission is "to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". This is undoubtedly a positive concern but I am not so naive to be fully convinced of Google - a profit organization - as only social-oriented. In 2003 a New York Times Columnist asked the provoking question "Is Google God?". Bill Thomson at the BBC asked "Is Google too powerful?" - a question that I also prefer. Is Google too powerful? Xiudian Dai wrote an interesting article about Google in which he sums up several fact/ reasons. First, "nation-states might see Google’s search power as a threat to their autonomy. First, the autonomy of the nation-state declines due to the
fact that Google search reinforces the trend towards economic globalisation."

- just to publish the beginning of this posting - I have to deal with the details more closely. All I can say by now: I am concerned. I will put down my concerns here in the next days. At first I have to sort my thoughts. Moreover, it will take a few time to study the details ;)

Why is it so important to develop a library 2.0 and what is critical about it? (discussed @ Bibcamp 2008)

Until now libraries were not forced to concentrate on reaching online communities. But within the last few years opportunities increased to build communities and share information within networks.

The question is: Will the library become unimportant in the future?
Several librarians don't think so (and we have to do so ;) ), e.g. Jochum: He (as several American LIS professionals, too) is the opinion that the abundance of virtuality is throwing us back to the analogue world.

But nevertheless we have to concentrate on online services and on serving Internet savvies. In this context the word "library2.0" evolved. But what is behind the word "library2.0"? What does it mean in detail?
Heller is describing it in the foreword to the "library2.0"-Issue of BuB (Vol 31, 2007, Issue 2). I only want to concentrate on a few things: library2.0 is about interaction with customers, participation of users especially in the regard of user-generated content, and so on.
Unfortunately, "library2.0" is used too much so that it will be screwed up in a few years. "Library2.0" is a buzzword. Therefore, librians have to find a better word that is decribing the root of the matter. Particularly, because "library2.0" causes confusion: Is "library2.0" an extension of "library1.0"? Or is "library2.0" displacing "library1.0"? In this regard: Is everything of the traditional library to change??
The core functions remain. Librarians always were distributors of information -but now librarians are not the only gateways to information any more: (Fortunately?) they lost their role as gatekeepers.
Moreover the word "library2.0" is not the correct one because it implies that librarians have to upgrade themselves to stay alive. In the sense of keeping up-to-date it's right but to communicate this to "conservative" librarians gives them a negative feeling (technostress).
But it's clear that librarians have to change -or else they are not able to change the library : Libraries should serve as windows to the multifaceted landscapes of the information world.