Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Week 8: Screencasting

As with podcasting, I think the possibilities for screencasting in libraries are limitless. Here's a situation I often find myself in at the Reference Desk:

A patron is interested in using one of our electronic resources from home. I print out our homepage and circle where they need to click. Then I print out the electronic resources page and circle the link there. I then explain to them what information they will need to type in from their account. I give them our contact information and strongly encourage them to let us know if they get home and have any problems. In my 9 years of working in public libraries I have probably repeated this process dozens of times. I send them away hoping my demonstration was adequate and that they'll be able to remember it when they need.

Screencasting demonstrations for these resources, on the other hand, would give them something to refer when they home and find themselves not quite remembering what I said. There's the added benefit of not needing to print out the same pages over and over.

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