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The purpose of this paper is to report on how researchers at Penn State University used video screen capture technology to learn more about student usage of the library's databases.

The process of identifying and implementing a novel way to capture and analyze the human‐computer interaction is outlined and discussed.

Because of the drawbacks associated with both formal, direct physical observation of research participants and videotaping participants, video screen capture technology is chosen as a better way to track human‐computer interaction.

Video screen capture technology is an inexpensive, user‐friendly way to enhance electronic resource usability studies in any library. Research files can be easily exported into coding software for data analysis.

The paper examines a new, non‐invasive way to capture student research behavior. It shows how any library could use this same technology to conduct research on how their resources are being used by their user population.

We describe an automatic classroom capture system that detects and records significant (stable) points in lectures by sampling and analyzing a sequence of screen capture frames from a PC used for presentations, application demonstrations, etc. The system uses visual inspection techniques to scan the screen capture stream to identify points to store. Unlike systems that only detect and store slide presentation transitions, this system detects and stores significant frames in any style of computer‐based lecture using any program. The system is transparent to the lecturer and requires no software or training. It has been tested extensively on lectures with multiple applications and pen‐based annotations and has successfully identified “significant” frames (frames that represent stable events such as a new slide, bullet, figure, inked comment, drawing, code entry, application entry etc.). The system can analyze over 20000 frames and typically identifies and stores about 100 significant frames within minutes of the end of a lecture. A time stamp for each saved frame is recorded and will in the future be used to compile these frames into a jMANIC multimedia record of the class.

To describe the use of a Composer’s Cut video as a tool for reflecting on and celebrating one’s experience creating multimodal compositions for personal and social audiences.

Two adolescents designed and produced digital video stories about their prior experience composing a webpage and a multimodal literary analysis hypertext in response to the Vietnam war novel, The Things They Carried.

Each student remixed Camtasia screen capture video, class video, and images, enhanced with text overlays and music, to showcase their unique vision as a multimodal designer and to highlight their composing processes. They viewed the Composer’s Cut video as a powerful vehicle for reflection and appreciated that their videos would have a public audience.

Reflection often tends to be oral or written. Digital video supports students in showing, as well as telling their experience through multiple modes. The Composer’s Cut video is one example of how video might be used for reflection that is both personal and social.

This article discusses downloading from OPACs in general and from the INNOPAC system in particular. It begins by setting out a brief philosophy of downloading, providing an introduction to OPAC downloading. It then discusses the practice of OPAC downloading with particular emphasis on tools for capturing and “postprocessing” downloaded flies. Technical and institutional constraints on downloading are addressed and an innovative program for overcoming some of these constraints is described in detail. The article concludes by considering various proposals for improving INNOPAC downloading capabilities.

As the use of electronic library resources increases, the demand for online support also multiplies. Information literacy and 24/7 customer support are some of the urgent issues related to research in an electronic environment that many libraries are trying to address today. This article describes an approach in meeting these challenges, the Let‐It‐V (Learning E‐Resources Through Instructional Technology Videos) project at the Texas A&M University Libraries. This study combines the use of screen‐captured videos and a streaming media encoder to produce topic‐specific videos for task‐oriented demands. It is visual, interactive, and seeks to provide just‐in‐time solutions at a point of need. On‐demand streaming is a viable, cost‐effective alternative for low bandwidth delivery of video‐enabled library instruction. The technologies involved, key development issues, lessons learned and their implications for distance learning are discussed.

Presents a conversation between Grete Pasch and Quinn Stewart, co‐developers of the Web‐based version of “Information in Cyberspace” (LIS312g) at the University of Texas Graduate School of Library and Information Science. The developers recount their experience from the initial idea, to experimentation with technologies and selection of tools, to course development, converting the class to a Web‐based format, using streaming media for content delivery, e‐mail and discussion boards for student‐faculty interaction, and PERL‐based tools for course management. Emphasizes using a team approach, testing the materials, getting student feedback, and counting on effective technical support as critical success factors. Also emphasizes making the most of existing as well as unexpected opportunities (such as the reuse of tutorials for other courses). Above all, the authors see the creation of Web‐based courses as an opportunity for instructors to research and experience various technologies for content presentation, to stay in touch with student needs, and to look toward the future of digital materials.

The growing use of the Internet, online hosts, electronic banking and bulletin board systems means that with increasing frequency evidence needs to be collected from remote computers for use in legal proceedings. Issues of the evaluation of weight still need to be addressed even if strict rules of admissibility are removed. The background processes involved need to be understood if courts are to be able to test evidential quality. The controls that should be in place are discussed and a series of tests of provenance and reliability are suggested. Such tests, however, will never be more than decision aids.

This paper aims to focus on how doctoral students’ emotional arousal influenced their cognition in a challenging online application activity, that of applying for online Institutional Review Board approval for human subject research. Participants were social science doctoral students. Data were collected in two sessions: a video/audio-recorded work session and a follow-up interview. Results are presented in three themes derived inductively from qualitative data analysis.

The authors took a qualitative approach to study the nature of participants’ experiences. Participants were 11 graduate students recruited as they were about to submit an application for approval from the university’s review board charged with ensuring the ethical treatment of research participants. These students were pursuing doctoral degrees in education fields in a research-intensive US university. Data were collected in two sessions: a video/audio-recorded “work session” in which participants worked on their IRB application, and a post-interview session that used the video-record for stimulated recall. For the first session, participants were instructed to narrate aloud what they were thinking and feeling during the activity. Camtasia software was used to capture each participant’s desktop and mouse pointer movements. Cameras simultaneously captured video and audio recordings of the participants’ facial expressions and speech. These work sessions, and the subsequent interview sessions, occurred in a small quiet room with wireless access. Analysis proceeded in four phases. First, the authors made a transcript of the work sessions, screen-capturing participants’ faces whenever they spoke aloud, took action as they interacted with the website or showed some sort of emotion. They referred to these freeze shots as frames. The frames allowed us to track the time individuals spent in different episodes of the application. Second, the authors labelled the emotions they saw, with two researchers working together and bringing any discrepancies to the larger research team for consensus decisions. Third, to these transcripts of the first session, the authors connected interview transcript segments.

Results are presented in three themes derived inductively from qualitative data analysis. Theme 1 indicates that emotions accompanied processes involved in the online application. Theme 2 suggests that new users differed from more experienced users in the amount, valence and intensity of emotions. Theme 3 describes one source of these differences, experienced users’ greater knowledge of the process and equanimity in the face of possible mistakes. These results shed light on emotions as these arise in the course of accomplishing an increasingly common task, that of filling out a Web application that is personally consequential but not user-friendly.

The authors aimed to understand better the emotional experiences of graduate students by moving beyond the more global explorations of graduate students’ cumulative experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to define and describe informal screencasting (i.e. capturing your actions on a computer screen with the goal of showing others how to accomplish tasks on a website or in a given software environment). Customer‐satisfaction survey results from 103 faculty, staff, and students are presented.

An online survey revealing customer satisfaction with informal screencasts was made available in Spring 2010 to faculty, staff, and students of a mid‐sized public university in Arlington, Texas, USA. Results are compiled, analyzed, and presented here.

Most participants' reactions to the librarian's informal screencasts were positive or quite positive, but many participants still noted that they would prefer to receive e‐mail instructions in answer to their questions.

The survey was not distributed to a representative sample of the population; instead, the author solicited participants via e‐mail, so the participant pool was a convenience sample, which could introduce bias in the results.

This survey is the first to assess academic library customers' attitudes toward informal screencasting as an instructional tool, as far as the author has been able to determine after an extensive literature search.

Once in a while, you should take stock of your personal computing environment. What is on your system? How did it get there? What do you actually use? How did you arrive at your hardware configuration, and does it still meet your needs? You may find that you can free up some disk space in the process; at the very least, you'll understand your situation better. The author goes through this exercise both as an example of what it can show and because full disclosure is important for this series of articles. You need to know the background for the advice that appears here. The author discloses his current computing environments, how they got that way, and what that may mean. He also points out the real limits within which he operates as a PC commentator. When you go through the software on your system, you should check to see whether it represents ethical computing. The author offers a few notes on ethical issues related to software. The author also provides notes from PC literature for January‐June 1992.