Thing #38 -- Screencasting

The things in this Thing are pretty old hat to me at this point. I've been using SnagIt for years to put screen shots in the database guides I create for students or email answers to student requests for help. And I also use Grab when on my Mac. In fact, it's how I captured my Wordle word cloud to put in the previous Thing.

I've used various tools for screencasting. The first one I created was about 2 years ago, using Wink. I didn't find the learning curve very steep, and it has a surprising amount of functionality for a free program. While it didn't take long to record my capture, it was extremely time consuming to edit my tutorial to get it the way I wanted it--adjusting the timing and adding branching. I have since given up on Wink in favor of Adobe's Captivate, which makes it a lot easier to edit my captures.

Primarily I use these tools for creating full-blown database tutorials. However, over the winter I discovered Jing, and have been using it heavily since. Since there are no post-capture editing options, it doesn't have the functionality of Wink or Captivate (or Camtasia, for that matter), but it fills a need for creating "quick and dirty" videos. Students often ask me for help via email. In the past I would answer their questions with a combination of screen shots and blow-by-blow text descriptions of what to look for and where to click. With Jing, I just create a short video of what they should do, upload it to Screencast.com, and email a link to the video. The students have found this approach very helpful, and it takes much less time to make the video than to explain the same concepts in the text of an email.

Thing #17 -- ELM Productivity Tools

Gale and Search Alerts: I'm quite familiar with search alerts in general, although I haven't created any in the ELM databases. I use them in a few different databases to inform me of book reviews in subjects related to my liaison departments. Last year I showed faculty in one of my departments how to create search alerts and this fall I created a search alert tutorial for them using Wink.

As long as I'm (peripherally) on the topic of the Gale ELM databases--One tip I picked up a few months ago from a colleague at another institution was to publicize the K-12 focused databases to students in the education department here. I realized they could be helpful to students for creating lesson plans and other aspects of their student teaching.

EBSCO's Page Composer and ProQuest web page creation: This is kind of funny--After reading this Thing I remembered I had previously played with the "create a web page" function in ProQuest, but didn't think I knew you could do something similar in EBSCO. Then when I opened my folder, there was a web page already sitting there. Guess that functionality didn't make too much of an impression on me!

I'm not sure I would use either of these a lot since I have other web editing tools available to me. However, they could be useful for our students as one way to save articles they were interested in. Putting their marked articles in a web page allows them to be clickable for easily retrieving them later--something they can't do with a paper printout from the database.

One way I might use these tools is when I am helping students with their research via email. I'm more likely to simply suggest databases and search terms than to send them actual citations--we are a college, after all, and they're supposed to be learning to do research themselves. But if I wanted to include citations, doing so as by attaching a web page with articles linking into the database would be a good way to do it.

Something I don't like about ProQuest is it doesn't allow you to create an account and keep your results or web pages beyond the current session.

NetLibrary: I've tried reading books on NetLibrary several times, and every time I'm reminded how much I hate reading on the computer. Given this, I can't imagine wanting to take my notes online. I believe some of our students have discovered the note taking function in NetLibrary, but many of them just want to print off pages from the books they find.

Thing #16 -- Student 2.0 Tools

We customized the Assignment Calculator and added it to our library's web page a little over a year ago. We tried to link as many of the steps to content on our own web site as possible. There are links to it from various pages on our web site, including a section we have for new students. Whenever I'm teaching these students about using the library for their research projects I usually show them the Calculator. Web site statistics indicate it doesn't get as much use as many other parts of our web site, but this semester there have been just over 200 views of our Assignment Calculator so far.

We also added links on our web site to the Research Project Calculator found on the ELM Portal. In this case we just link to that site; we did not create our own version of it.

Thing #2 -- Library 2.0

Note to the reader: The following will be a series of perhaps disjointed thoughts on the subject of Library 2.0. As a colleague said to me, "It's just a blog," so I may not tie them together in a nice narrative structure.

I've been familiar with concept of Library 2.0 since 2006 when I ran into it at Computers in Libraries. For me, at least, the mindset changes are the most easy to do and apply to my work. I'm fairly open to change and looking for ways to try new things. And since I haven't been in the profession that long (10 years--so the Internet has always been a part of my library career) I don't feel myself completely ruled by traditional library orthodoxy, whether it's library "silos" or the MARC record.

Where I do stumble is in making the time to educate myself about the variety of L2 tools and resources out there. Or in taking the time to learn the necessary technical skills to implement some of the cool stuff. While I have some computer programming experience and am capable of learning the skills necessary, it's hard to justify (to myself and my superiors) taking the time. Unlike Stephen Abram, I was hired to be a "Reference Librarian" not "VP of Innovation" and while L2 is important, sometimes other more boring parts of my job have to take precedence. I still have to staff the reference desk and teach library instruction classes.

Still, there are some L2 changes happening in my library. We've been providing IM reference for just over a year, and brought a customized version of the Assignment Calculator online last spring. Several of us has Facebook account (although we don't always use them). When our building was remodeled a few years ago we made sure to include several group study rooms with tables, whiteboards, and network connections for laptops. There is enough room at the computers in our reference area for 2-3 people to sit around each computer, if they want to work together.

For me personally, I'm most interested in things like mashups or AJAX applications --ways to tinker around with how information is delivered. I've begun playing around with a Google Maps application, for example. However, sometimes I'll run up against the wall of lacking tech support for implementation. It also occurs to me that the move away from desktop applications and towards web apps is bringing us full circle. Or maybe spiraling up to a higher plane. In the early days there were servers to run the applications and dedicated client workstations to access them. Now, our desktop machines are kind of like bulked up clients, connecting to the larger "server" that is the web.

To a certain extent I feel that the ideas behind Library 2.0 aren't that new, or that big a deal. However, I can see the value in naming it and creating a "buzz" around it. It certainly raises the visibility of the concept and thus perhaps makes those who might be more afraid/resistant to change sit up and take notice of what's going on in the world around them. And that maybe they'd better get on board. Look at the number of librarians signed up for "23 Things." By reading some of their blogs there are many who are new to the whole 2.0 thing, but willing to try to learn and change. This may not have happened if they were just left to themselves, without the 23 Things initiative to get them going. Of course, there are also a lot of blogs that were started and have gone nowhere.

I like this line from John Blyberg's blog: "but whatever IT is, it IS." Guess I'd better get going and explore the rest of the Things.