A recent NY Times article on YouTube came just as Coolfer had began spending a bit of time searching for the kind of rarities and interesting clips that have the potential to make the site a landmine. For the uninitiated, YouTube is a website that allows users to upload videos to the site free of charge. There's a social aspect to the site, just as Flickr creates social networks from photos; it's easy to share a video with a friend, and videos are grouped by the tags applied to them.

Videos can only be streamed, not downloaded -- getting around thorny legal issues mean playback can be jerky -- and the video and audio qualities aren't spectacular. The trade-off comes in the variety of content. A search will result in all sorts of things, some recordings of proper videos and telecasts, others homemade movies.

There are other similar sites, but as Ben Ratliff points out in "A New Trove of Music Video in the Web's Wild World," YouTube has more to offer from every search query. The social aspects are nice, but the public archival aspects are better. As more people upload files, more rare, interesting and almost forgotton clips will be available to all Internet users.

Here's a short list of some things Coolfer has found on YouTube:

• Dave Brubeck performing "Take Five" on Jazz Casual in 1961.
• The Beastie Boys performing "She's On It" in the movie "Krush Groove."
• Husker Du performing "Could You Be The One?" on the "Joan Rivers Show." The clip includes a hilarious interview with Joan after the song. Missing is the band's performance of "She's A Woman (And Now He Is A Man)."
• Miles Davis with John Coltrane performing "So What" on a 1958 television show.
• Nas featuring NTM: Affirmative Action" Saint Denis Style remix. From 1996. NTM, a Parisian hip hop group, remixed the track by New York rapper Nas.
• The Replacements at the 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis in 1981.
• Os Mutantes and Gilberto Gil performing live on a television show.
• A performance by krautrock legends Amon Duul II.
• Iggy and the Stooges playing "TV Eye" live in Cincinatti in 1970. The introduction makes this clip special.
• A crowd recording of the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne inside a transparent plastic ball.
• If Alf were to make a death metal video.

And, for those of us who didn't watch the Grammys, there's a stream of Sly Stone's mohawked performance.

New York University is seeking a Department Chair for The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music.