Screencasting for Libraries

Citation

Smith, A.G. (2013), "Screencasting for Libraries", The Electronic Library, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 405-406. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-04-2013-0079

Now that many libraries offer their services remotely, the challenge in user education is to provide help to users that can be accessed remotely. In recent years screencasts have become a popular tool for offering instruction in the use of digital resources. What are screencasts? They are video recordings of a computer screen, enabling a librarian to demonstrate an interaction with a database or software application. They can be created very easily, often with free software, and can include voiceover instructions, labelling of features that the user needs their attention drawn to, background music, etc. The resulting video can be hosted on an external server and incorporated into online tutorials, or a one‐off demonstration can be created for an individual user.

Greg Notess, a University of Montana reference librarian well known for his expertise on search engines and the web, provides an accessible and detailed guide to creating screencasts. Although creating a screencast is easy, some planning and preparation tools make for a better product, and Notess introduces the reader to a range of these: “storyboarding” “callouts” and “click paths”. He reviews the software (and hardware) options for creating screencasts, ranging from free basic Web based solutions such as ScreenR, to commercial fully featured installed applications such as Camtasia.

Getting screencasting accepted as a tool in your library may take some effort, and Notess discusses, in a chapter on social mechanics, how to gain support from the library administration and create a pool of screencast creators among fellow staff.

The core of the book is an implementation chapter, in which Notess works through several screencasting projects step‐by‐step, using a variety of software and features. Incidentally, the resulting videos are available at the book's companion web page (www.notess.com/screencasting/book/), along with templates that can be used for planning.

The book concludes with chapters on marketing (for example by using QR codes on print material, as well as the obvious online marketing tools), best practices, and metrics for evaluation.

If you have only recently become aware of screencasting, but have not yet experimented with the tool, Screencasting for libraries will offer valuable guidance in getting started. If you are already creating screencasts, the book is still likely to provide some useful hints that will improve your practice.