LIBR 246-13 Building the Social Library Online

I came across this video on one of the art blogs I read.  I think it applies equally well as a learning resource for understanding web 2.0. Explorations of mediated culture The machine is US/ing us              

Boy, was this challenging!  I totally assumed that creating my screencast would be about as simple as creating my podcast.  For the most part, I wasn't too off base with that thought.  I used Camtasia to create the screencast and actually found it very user-friendly, even for first-timers like myself.  Their screencast tutorials are wonderful.  I watched them, created my screencast....then the problems started.

So it was a bit of a challenge this week for me trying to learn how to work Camtasia and actually producing the screencast, but it was fun.  I think if I enjoyed the sound of my voice more, I would really enjoy this program, but since I don't, I just got the screencast done and called it done.

Although creating my screencast took several hours, I am optimistic about this as a resource that will really make an impact in librarianship and information services. Customers at my public library really appreciate when I come to their internet workstation to help them with the computer, and I think this is because many people are visual learners.  Often times verbal explanations get lost, confused, or distorted, especially when it comes to using technology.  However, showing customers how to complete a task on the computer by standing next to them and letting them control

I thought screencasting is a great way to provide reference services at a library because it pulls together so many elements that would occur in a face-to-face reference interaction. I really enjoyed doing my screencast with Jing. I thought it was pretty intuitive and a worthwhle experience.  To be fair, I regularly do screencasts for my job and find that they do help, especially since we only provide remote support (phone and email).

This week's assignment was pretty cool except for the blip tv not accepting flash part.  I initially set my preferences to web so that producing anything but flash or quicktime produced a horrible video.  My quicktime movie was optimized for an ipod so the image is kinda lame too.

I used Camtasia to do my screencast, and was really impressed by easy it was to use. I found I really enjoyed doing it! So far, this has definitely been my favorite project for this class.

Greg Notess, author of the LibCasting blog, wrote up a terrific comparison of the free screencasting/hosting tools which could definitely be useful for those of you who have not yet chosen the recording tool you want to use. Feel free to host the screencast outside of blip.tv as long as you provide the URL of your screencast on your blog.

I've been creating screencasts for about four years, since around when the time the first screencast tools came out. Since then, all sorts of new screencasting tools have been released that provide greater functionality or that allow us to create screencasts for free. With the early screencast tools, it would take a very long time for the application to process the movie you made in order to save it, preview it, or publish it. Considering that, it's amazing how quickly Captivate and Camtasia work now versus how they were early on.