Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML) 8,4: 547-560, 2019

YouTube Videos Produced by U.S. Public Libraries:
Analysing Factors that Increase Views
Yuhiro Mizunuma1, Kazuki Sato1, Fumiaki Miyazaki1, Keita Tsuji2
1
2

Faculty of Media and Information Resources, Surugadai University, Japan
Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba, Japan

Abstract: Public libraries are increasingly posting content on social media platforms
such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In this paper, we focus on YouTube videos
produced by U.S. public libraries and identify the factors that increase their views.
Specifically, we compared 107 popular videos (with over 700 views) and 109 unpopular
ones (with less than 12 views) and analysed their differences. This research revealed thatthe unpopular videos were often too short (less than 30 seconds) or too long (more than
20 minutes). The popular videos overall were more informative than unpopular ones (e.g.
with longer titles to identify the contents of the videos). Furthermore, the ratios oftutorials and story times for popular videos (28.0% and 21.5%, respectively) weresignificantly higher than those for unpopular ones (6.4% and 10.1%, respectively). The
ratios of reports on events and event notices among popular videos (7.5% and 12.1%,
respectively) were significantly lower than those for unpopular ones (26.6% and 25.7%,
respectively).
Keywords: YouTube; Public Libraries; Library Marketing; Library Services; Social
Media; Content Analysis

1. Introduction
Many public libraries are now posting content on such social media platforms as
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. As will be discussed in Section 2 below,
many studies have been conducted regarding libraries’ uses of Facebook andTwitter. However, there have been very few studies on libraries’ employment ofYouTube.
In this paper, we focus on YouTube videos produced by U.S. public libraries
and examine the factors that helped to increase their views. First, we examined
how many U.S. public libraries used each major form of social media, including
YouTube, based on information from their official websites. We then developed
a list of libraries posting YouTube videos and selected 107 popular videos(those having over 700 views) and 109 unpopular videos (those having fewer_________________

Received: 23.7.2019 Accepted: 18.9.2019© ISAST

ISSN 2241-1925

548 Yuhiro Mizunuma et althan 12 views). We compared popular and unpopular videos with a focus on thevideos’ (1) time lengths, (2) titles, (3) descriptions, (4) uses of voice (i.e.,
whether or not the videos featured voices), (5) contents, and (6) cast members.
This research presents a real-world picture of libraries’ YouTube use and shouldbe helpful to libraries want to increase views of their YouTube videos and better
serve the public.

2. Related Studies
Many studies have been conducted regarding libraries’ use of Facebook andTwitter. For example, Vassilakaki and Garoufallou (2014) conducted literature
review on libraries’ uses of Facebook, analysing 50 papers published between
2006 and 2012. They found that main body of the relevant literature focused onreporting experiences, problems, and lessons learned from building a presence
on Facebook. Vassilakaki and Garoufallou (2015) also conducted a literature
review of libraries uses of Twitter. They conducted database retrieval using LIS
databases with research phrases such as ‘Twitter and libraries’ or ‘Twitter andlibrarians’, and 630 papers were identified. Based on the review of 51 papers,
they found that the papers mainly presented the reasons behind the adoption of
Twitter and how it is used specifically to meet the various needs and purposes oflibraries. Some research clarified the actual use of Facebook and Twitter basedon data posted from libraries. For example, Aharony (2012) conducted an
exploratory analysis of Facebook pages developed by 20 American public andacademic libraries to understand patterns of libraries’ Facebook use. Aharony(2010) also analysed tweets posted by 30 public and academic libraries andconducted statistical descriptive analysis and content analysis. Yoshida (2014)
and Ishikka et al. (2012) also conducted similar analyses of public and academic
libraries in Japan.
On the other hand, usage trends on YouTube were examined with the othersocial media platforms. For example, Taylor & Francis (2014) conducted asurvey on libraries’ use of social media, including YouTube. The survey foundthat more than 70% of libraries were using social media tools, 60% had a social
media account for three years or longer, and 30% of librarians were posting atleast once per day. It also found that Facebook and Twitter remained the mostpopular platforms, but there was a particular acceleration of interest in visual
platforms such as YouTube, Pinterest, and Snapchat. Moreover, the survey
showed that social media platforms including YouTube were increasingly
considered collection management tools, offering flexible ways to present
resources such as digital video collections.
Although they are fewer in number than studies focused on libraries’ Facebook
and Twitter use, there are some studies that have examined libraries’ uses ofYouTube. Webb (2007) discussed the effectiveness of libraries’ YouTube use.
Ariew (2009), Intahchomphoo (2013), and Cho (2013) discussed thepossibilities and problems with libraries’ YouTube use based on the examples of
the University of South Florida, University of Ottawa’s Brian Dickson Law

Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML) 8,4: 547-560, 2019 549

Library, Harvard Law School Library, and the libraries of the University of
British Columbia, respectively. Colburn and Haines (2012) examined libraries’
YouTube use in detail to understand how libraries employ YouTube foroutreach. To select sample videos, they searched YouTube with four keywords(library, libraries, librarian, and librarians), categorized 373 videos, retrieved 55
videos that were created by libraries for promotional purposes, and analysed
those videos in detail with a focus on the content, websites linked to the videos,interactive features such as comments, and views. Colburn and Haines foundthat the ‘General promotion/appreciation’ of libraries was the most common
type of library promotional material created, following ‘Orientation/Tour
videos’, ‘Patron-generated’, and ‘Promotion of service/collection’. Theirresearch also found that from 2008 to 2009, view counts grew by 174 per centon average.
Our study also focuses on YouTube use in libraries. In addition, in light of
Aharony (2012, 2014) and Colburn and Haines (2012), we have adopted anempirical approach to relevant social media content produced by libraries.
However, unlike previous research, we aimed to identify the factors that
increased view counts. To this end, we focused on YouTube videos produced by
U.S. public libraries, comparing 107 popular videos (having over 700 views)
and 109 unpopular ones (having fewer than 12 views), and examined theirdifferences. To our knowledge, this is the first such study to identify the factorsthat increase libraries’ views on YouTube.

3. Method
We first examined how many U.S. public libraries used YouTube. In addition,
based on the collected data, we determined the elements that increased theirview counts. In this section, we will explain each method.
3.1 Method of Investigation for Libraries’ Utilization of YouTube
We first determined how many U.S. public libraries used YouTube. We
examined not only YouTube but also other social media platforms, such as
Facebook, in order to view the use of YouTube in more detail.
For background, we investigated libraries’ official websites. If there were
notices or links to social media on a library’s website, we assumed the library
was engaged with social media. Data from official websites were obtained from
American Library Directory (http://www.americanlibrarydirectory.com/),
published by Information Today. It includes profiles of approximately 36,000
public, academic, special, and government libraries and library-relatedorganizations in the U.S. and Canada—including website URLs. We assumed
the URLs were the official websites, and we conducted the survey based on
those URLs. We selected the sample libraries and URLs according to thefollowing steps:

550 Yuhiro Mizunuma et al(1) We downloaded records of 9,629 U.S. public libraries (only main
libraries) using American Library Directory. More specifically, we
conducted advanced searches using research options shown in Figure 1.
(2) We randomly chose 1,000 library records from the 9,629 libraryrecords.
(3) We excluded 157 libraries that had no website URL data (843 libraryrecords remained).
(4) We excluded 112 libraries with websites that we could not reach forsuch reasons as broken links (731 library records remained).

Figure 1. Search Condition1
Next, we investigated how social media platforms, including YouTube, wereused in 731 public libraries. The platforms we considered included (1)YouTube, (2) Facebook, (3) Twitter, (4) Instagram, (5) Pinterest, (6) Flickr, (7)Tumblr, (8) LinkedIn, (9) Goodreads, and (10) SoundCloud. As mentioned
above, if there were advertisements or links to social media on a library’s
official website, we assumed the library utilized the social media.
We also determined the details of the accounts and links. More specifically, weclassified the accounts and links based on the following conditions: (1) The
library had its own account; (2) the library did not have its own account, but itQualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML) 8,4: 547-560, 2019 551

had the respective municipality’s account and posted library’s information; (3)the library did not have its own account but had the municipality’s account, andit had not posted library’s information; (4) the website had a notice or icon forsocial media but no link to the social media platform; (5) the website had anotice or icon for social media, but the link was broken; (6) the website had anotice or icon for social media, but we could not view the account for suchreasons as location restriction. We conducted this survey from 8 September to
12 September 2018.
3.2 Method for Investigating the Factors that Increase Social Media Views
Based on the data collected regarding libraries’ utilization of YouTube, weinvestigated the elements that increase their views. More specifically, we
compared libraries’ popular YouTube videos with unpopular ones and identified
their differences. We used 107 popular videos and 109 unpopular videos as oursample. Videos were selected based on the following factors:(1) The 96 libraries investigated in the previous section possessed their own
YouTube accounts. The number of unique accounts was 932. We
excluded one account that could no longer be found3. We also excluded
27 accounts that posted more than 50 videos4.
(2) We defined popular videos as those with over 700 views. The sample of
popular videos included 107 videos.
(3) We defined unpopular videos as those with less than 12 views and with agap of six months since uploading5. The sample of unpopular videos
included 109 videos.
We compared the 107 popular and 109 unpopular videos, consideringcharacteristics shown in Table 1. For example, we compared popular andunpopular videos, focusing on the video’s length, and attempted to determine
the factors that increased views. The ‘Contents’ section in Table 1 highlights
classifications based on videos’ contents, and it will be explained in more detailin the next section. The race of the video cast members was estimated based ona face recognition web service, Betaface (https://betaface.com/demo_old.html),
using a screenshot from each video. We conducted this survey from 24
September 2018 to 1 April 2019.

4. Results
In this section, we first show the results of the investigation into libraries’ usesof YouTube. Afterward, we will show the results concerning our investigationof the factors that increase views. The results are shown in terms of time, title,
descriptions, voices, contents, and cast members in this order.

552 Yuhiro Mizunuma et al

Table 1. Investigation Items
4.1 Results Concerning Libraries’ Utilization of YouTube
Table 2 through Table 6 show the utilization ratios of each social media
experience, and classifications (a) to (f) represent whether (a) the library had its
own account; (b) the library did not have its own account, but it had themunicipality’s account on which it posted library information; (c) the library did
not have its own account and had its municipality’s account, but it had notposted library’s information; (d) there was an advertisement or icon for social
media on the website but no link to the social media account; (e) there was anadvertisement or icon for social media on the website, but the link was broken;
and (f) there was an advertisement or icon for social media, but we could notview the account for such reasons as location or privacy restriction.
The numbers in parentheses in Table 2 represent the number of libraries
investigated. For example, concerning YouTube, 92 libraries have libraryaccounts, and this comprises 12.6% of our sample libraries (731 libraries).
Facebook’s utilization ratio was higher than any other social media’s ratio.
Concerning the ‘(a) ratio of library account’, the utilization ratio of YouTube(12.6%) was the fifth highest in our sample of social media, following Facebook(69.5%), Twitter (31.6%), Instagram (20.9%), and Pinterest (14.8%). Almost all
sample social media contained broken links; this study shows that maintenanceof links is an issue for libraries.

Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML) 8,4: 547-560, 2019 553

Table 2. Utilization Ratios of Social Media Platforms (1)Table 3. Utilization Ratios of Social Media Platforms (2)Table 4. Utilization Ratios of Social Media Platforms (3)Table 5. Utilization Ratios of Social Media Platforms (4)554 Yuhiro Mizunuma et al

Table 6. Utilization Ratios of Social Media Platforms (5)4.2 Results Concerning Time
Table 7 represents the length of the videos in terms of the mean (average),
median, maximum, and minimum times. The mean for popular videos was 3
minutes, 44 seconds and the mean for unpopular videos was 4 minute 29
seconds. There was no significant difference between popular and unpopular
videos based on Welch’s t-test at 0.05 levels. Table 7 further shows that the
maximum length of unpopular videos (one hour 23 minutes 18 seconds) was
longer than that of popular videos (19 minutes 41 seconds), whereas theminimum length of unpopular videos (3 seconds) was shorter than that of
popular videos (29 seconds). In addition, there were 19 videos in which thelengths of time were longer than 20 minutes or shorter than 30 seconds for all(i.e., popular and unpopular) videos. Remarkably, only one of them was a
popular video, and the rest (18 videos) were unpopular ones.

Table 7. Video Length (hh:mm:ss)
4.3 Results Comparing Video Titles
Tables 8 and 9 show the results of the length of each video’s title. Table 8 shows
the mean, median, maximum, and minimum of the number of characters in thetitle. Table 9 shows the number of words in the title. The asterisks in the ‘Mean’column represent significant differences based on Welch’s test. Single asterisks
indicate that there was significance at the 0.05 level; double asterisks indicate
significant differences at the 0.01 level. Concerning both the number ofcharacters and the number of words, the mean and median of popular videos
were higher than unpopular videos, and there were significant differences
between popular and unpopular videos.

Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML) 8,4: 547-560, 2019 555

Table 10 shows the frequency of certain words in the titles. We calculated
frequencies of the words, and the top 10 words are presented in Table 10. The
numbers in parenthesis represent words’ frequencies. ‘Library’ appeared withthe highest frequency in both popular and unpopular videos. In this table,findings show that, unlike unpopular videos, popular videos included ‘tutorial’,and terms related to eBooks such as ‘eBooks’, ‘OverDrive’, and ‘downloading’.
On the other hand, unlike popular videos, unpopular videos included words that
may be related to library records such as ‘Vlog’, ‘2017’, and ‘2013’.

Table 8. Length of Video Title (The Number of Characters)

Table 9. Length of Video Title (The Number of Words)

Table 10. The Top Ten Words in the Title

556 Yuhiro Mizunuma et al

4.4 Results Concerning Descriptions
Table 11 provides the ratios of the videos that included descriptions. The tableshows that 95.3% of popular videos had descriptions, whereas only 78.0% of
unpopular videos included descriptions. The research found significant
differences in the ratio between popular videos and unpopular videos, based on
the Z-test for proportions at the 0.01 levels.

Table 11. The Ratios of Videos Including Descriptions
4.5 Results Concerning Voice
Table 12 shows the ratios of the videos that had voice sounds. Table 12 showsthat 86.9% of popular videos included vocal sounds, or voices, whereas 74.3%
of unpopular videos included voices. There were significant differences between
the ratios among popular videos and unpopular videos based on the Z-test for
proportions at 0.05 levels.
Interestingly, among popular videos, Spanish was spoken in three videos, andsign language was used in one video. There was no such video among
unpopular videos.

Table 12. The Ratios of the Video Including Voice Sounds
4.6 Results Concerning Contents
Table 13 displays the results of our content analysis. The findings show thatsome libraries provided library services through YouTube and others used
YouTube to introduce or promote their libraries. Library services provided
through YouTube included the introduction of materials such as books or CDs,and it included tutorials and story times. Typical tutorials included those forknitting, cord cutting, installing eBooks, and playing a board game. Whenlibraries offered introductions to the library, they typically included general
introductions of promotional videos, services, events, buildings, and displays.
There were entertainment videos, comedies, or videos to build familiarity. The‘Others’ category includes ‘August Storm’ videos, for example, featuring
recordings of thunderstorms pushing recycling bins around the library’s parking
lot. ‘Unknowns’ were videos for which we could not understand the purpose.
Table 13 shows that there were significant differences between popular andunpopular videos in terms of content. The ratios of popular videos weresignificantly higher than those of unpopular videos concerning tutorials (28.0%
and 6.4%, respectively), story times (21.5% and 10.1%, respectively),Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML) 8,4: 547-560, 2019 557

introductions of services (26.2% and 6.4%, respectively), and entertainments,
comedies, or videos to build familiarity (14.0% and 0.0%, respectively). On theother hand, the ratios of unpopular videos were significantly higher than thoseof popular videos concerning introduction of materials (20.2% and 0.0%,
respectively), introduction of events or programs, both reporting (26.6% and7.5%, respectively) and notification (25.7% and 12.1%, respectively),
introductions of displays (12.8% and 0.0%, respectively), and unknowns (5.5%
and 0.0%, respectively).

Table 13. Video Contents
4.7 Results concerning the Cast Members
Table 14 displays the numbers of cast members in the videos. In Table 14, ‘2~3’
represents the videos in which cast members were two or three people, and ‘4~’
represents the videos which included four or more cast members. There was no
significant difference between popular and unpopular videos concerning thenumber of cast members. It was found that there was at least one cast member in
73 popular and 73 unpopular videos.
In addition, we investigated the racial makeup among cast members using
Betaface when there were three or fewer cast members. Table 15 shows thegeneral racial distribution among cast members of popular and unpopular
videos. ‘Unknown’ refers to the videos that were judged as showing no faces byBetaface. Table 15 shows that there were no African American6 cast members in
the popular videos, and there was only one African American cast member in
one unpopular video. In addition, we randomly selected ten unpopular andpopular videos (a total of 20 videos) with a number of cast members at four or558 Yuhiro Mizunuma et al

more and investigated the role of each cast member. Concerning popular videos,librarians appeared in eight videos. In these videos, one librarian appeared in
one video, two librarians appeared in one video, seven librarians appeared in
one video, nine librarians appeared in one video, and ten or more librarians
appeared in four videos. In the unpopular videos, librarians appeared in eight
videos. In these videos, one librarian appeared in six videos, two librarians
appeared in one video, and three librarians appeared in three videos.

Table 14. Number of Cast Members

Table 15. Race of Cast Members

5. Discussions
As the first factor increases views of libraries’ YouTube, we will discuss regards
the length of the videos. The analysis found that unpopular videos were often
extremely short (less than 30 seconds) or very long (over 20 minutes). It is quitepossible that people quit watching the videos if the videos were too long or too
short. In addition, popular videos tended to have longer titles and include
descriptions more often, compared with unpopular ones. Our analysis has
determined that the popular videos were more informative than the unpopular
ones. The results regarding video contents indicated that popular videos tended
to provide library services by themselves such as offering tutorials or story
times. On the other hand, the ratios of introduction of their displays, event
reports and event notices among popular videos were significantly lower thanthose among unpopular ones.
It is interesting to note that popular videos included three Spanish videos andone sign language video. This finding may indicate that YouTube videos could
be effective ways to provide services for underserved communities, such as
speakers of English as a second language or sign language speakers. Moreover,as we describe above, many libraries provide library services such as
information services and children’s services via YouTube. This means that
YouTube videos can be helpful not only for speakers of foreign language but

Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML) 8,4: 547-560, 2019 559

also for people with disabilities who might not be able come into libraries
regularly.
Next, the second key factor in libraries’ uses of YouTube concerns castmembers of the videos in our sample, beginning with race. For videos with threeor fewer cast members, none of the popular videos and one of the unpopular
videos included African American cast members. This was only 0.9% of oursample cast members. The 2010 census of U.S. showed that the ratio of black or
African American people living in the U.S. was 12.3%. The ratio of African
American people appearing in libraries’ YouTube videos was significantly
lower than the number of African American people living in the U.S. according
to the census report.
Another factor for success with YouTube video views concerns librarians. In
relation to the videos with four or more cast members, many librarians appearedin popular videos whereas few librarians appeared in unpopular videos. In thevideos where many librarians appeared, librarians often explained how
wonderful the libraries were. In order to provide such explanations, librarians
might strive to create varied and detailed elements of videos, and thus theymight produce more popular and higher-quality videos. In addition, it is easy forvideo viewers to recommend such videos to their friends, including students or
new residents, and these high view counts for this style of video may occur as aresult.

6. Conclusions
In this paper, we focused on YouTube videos made by U.S. public libraries,
showing the actual state of libraries’ YouTube utilization and the factors that
increase their views. Specifically, we first examined how many public libraries
were utilizing each social media platform, including YouTube, based on
information from their official websites. In addition, we compared 107 popular
videos (having more than 700 views) and 109 unpopular ones (having fewer
than 12 views) and analysed their differences. Results showed that theunpopular videos were often very short (less than 30 seconds) or very long (over
20 minutes). The popular videos were more informative than the unpopular ones(e.g. they had longer titles and included descriptions more often to identify thecontents of the videos). Furthermore, the ratios of tutorials and story time
among popular videos were significantly higher than those among unpopular
ones. Nevertheless, the ratios of event reports and event notices among popular
videos were significantly lower than those among unpopular ones. Further, theresults suggested the potential effectiveness of YouTube to provide services forminority and underserved populations. In fact, the ratio of African American
people appearing in libraries’ YouTube videos was significantly lower than thatof the U.S. population, according to the last census report.
In future study of this area, we would like to increase the sample size. In
addition, we would like to investigate these factors in relation to other social

560 Yuhiro Mizunuma et al

media. Such additional work is needed to identify more effective methods forboth providing information and in marketing of libraries.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP19K20632.

Notes
1

American Library Directory. Access date 26.08.2018 available at
http://www.americanlibrarydirectory.com/AdvSearch.asp
2
The number of libraries’ accounts and the number of unique accounts were notequal because some libraries shared one account. For example, two of oursample libraries shared the ‘Four County Library System’ account.
3
Before starting this investigation, the official websites had been updated, andthe link to YouTube video content had apparently been deleted.
4
We excluded the accounts that posted many times because it could influence
factors other than the factors of the video itself.
5
We excluded the videos because fewer view counts were caused not by thevideo itself but by the brief time that the video had been online.
6‘African Americans’ used here were the people who referred to as ‘Black’ in
Betaface.
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