The RUSA MARS Hot Topics Discussion Group presented a panel discussion on screencasting Saturday: “Casting a Wide Net: Using Screencasts to Reach and Teach Library Users.” Committee co-chair Michelle Jacobs was not in attendance, so–appropriately enough–she introduced the session via screencast.
Eric Frierson of the University of Texas at Arlington demonstrated how his library’s online catalog used embedded screencasts, with links to videos such as “Where’s the PDF?”, “I need peer-reviewed”, or “Bad Results” appearing when users are likely to need them. The education subject guide he built also features a welcome video prominently to make the quantity of material less overwhelming. “What I’m trying to do is build a comfort level, particularly with distance education students who will never meet me,” Frierson said.
Mick Jacobsen of Skokie (Ill.) Public Library offered a public librarian’s perspective on screencasting, observing that patrons do are interested in information rather than reference sources. “Very few people come to learn to use Reference USA,” he noted. “They wouldn’t know what we’re talking about. But they would respond to ‘Do you want to find more customers?’”
Carmen Kazakoff-Lane, distance education librarian at Brandon University in Manitoba, demonstrated the Animated Tutorial Sharing (ANTS) Project, a collaborative project among librarians to create and share tutorial videos across institutions.
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:24 am by Greg Landgraf
One of the earliest requests we had when we started AL Focus was to include transcripts of videos. We looked for an easy, elegant way to provide them… and didn’t find any.
We did, eventually, find a more mundane way, thanks to John Chrastka, ALA’s director of Membership Development, and Molly Sasajima of ALA Conference Services, who actually did the transcribing work. As a result, all of the AL Focus videos now have transcripts. To access them, simply click on the “Transcript” link in each video’s description. The transcript will open in a new tab or window, so the video will not be interrupted.
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:40 pm by Greg Landgraf
The final bit of coverage (on this blog, at least) of GLLS 08: The video. The full interview list:
Lawrence Kutner, Center for Mental Health and Media, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital (keynote: “Grand Theft Childhood? Real Data on Violent Video Games and Youth”)
Seann Dikkers, University of Wisconsin-Madison Games Learning Society Group (presentation: “Building After School Game Clubs Using Total War”)
Lindsey Wesson, Tennessee State Library and Archives (presentation: “Turning Gamers into Readers: What Wii Can Do”)
Amanda Lenhart, Pew/Internet Life (keynote: “Teens, Video Games, and Civics: What the Research is Telling Us”)
Rick Bolton, Library Mini-Golf (host, “Golfing through the Stacks”)
Larry Lewis Jr., Flying Blind LLC (presenation: “Integrating Non-Visual Access into a Library’s Gaming Experience”)
Eli Neiburger, Ann Arbor District Library (presentation: “Pokemon Primer”)
But if you prefer to watch just for the somewhat metaphysical song about gaming performed within a game, I won’t be offended.
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:03 am by Greg Landgraf
One last bit from LITA: the video. It features Tim Spalding, Michael Porter, Dinah Sanders, Nicholas Schiller, Conference Chair Dale Poulter, and LITA president Andrew Pace, as well as a very brief snippet (under the opening title) of the blackjack-for-grapes game that broke out at the Open Gaming Night.
I don’t plan on making this a regular occurrence, but I’d like to take an opportunity to plug an AL Focus video:
I’m sharing this for the content, not the cinematography (of which there’s more or less none). This is Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, reading a letter from one of his readers, at the Banned Books Read-Out in Chicago September 27.
That description really doesn’t do the video justice, though. It’s one of the most powerful arguments I’ve seen for keeping a book available—an utterly visceral approach to intellectual freedom, rather than a, well, intellectual one.