Camtasia for Information Literacy

So this week my group decided to take a look at various uses of video tutorials, and screencasts used by libraries.  I was inspired by the succinct and very professional Libcasts created by Dalhousie University Libraries. They are excellent resources for learning everything from basic searching, finding books, citing, right up to the detailed feature of subject specific databases.

In that vein I decided to try my hand at making an information literacy screencast using Camtasia.  I decided to focus on a topic that I know well.  So I created a short (<2 minute) video showing biblical studies students (I am actually the liaison with the religious studies and biblical studies department) how to use the “scripture” feature in Ebsco’s ATLA religion database. You can see the video here:

There were several challenges with this.  First of all, I did not want to pay the $99 just to do this assignment (I will assess this tool a bit further and make the argument that the library I work at should invest in this).  This meant that many video editing features were not available to me in the free trial version.  So the video is a VERY rough draft.  If I had the time to do a few “real” videos, I would edit them with clean transitions, zooms, and use feature to highlight what I am telling the students to click on.

However, my experiment in both searching for screencasts and creating one has shown me that they are a way of presenting information literacy instruction that could be very effective.  They could especially important for distance students, or reaching students who are just too shy to approach the reference desk, or who might never attend a library instruction session.

I found it very valuable, and I hope to get Camtasia Pro in the future and dedicate more time to making tutorials.