You mentioned the ANTS project in your discussion about how to make screencasting a bit saner. Sharing is definitely the way.

As a member of the ANTS project, I wanted to tell you and others, that the list of databases identified for development is a starting point. We initially identified the e-rsources listed for COPPUL libraries, but recently the project was opened beyond COPPUL (any librarian anywhere can participate in it) and as the wish list in on a WIKI we fully expect that anyone can go to the list and identify other tutorials they would like to see developed.

Earlier in my career I spent a lot of time reviewing e-resouces that I purchased on behalf of my library and am fully aware of how many new e-resources are emerging so it only makes sense to develop a dynamic list that meets changing needs. I also am aware of how frequently vendors change interfaces, so we designed ANTS with the goal of having one librarian adopt a tutorial and keep it up to date. This was deemed to be far superior to having one librarian create multiple tutorials but not have the time to keep them up to date.

As screencasting technology has only started to make its way into mainstream, the discussion about sharing tutorials is really only starting to emerge. There are a few projects out there, but ANTS is unique in that it allows anyone to contribute, and it creates a tool that enables people to learn what is developed on in development via the Wiki – thereby enabling people to eliminate redundancy of effort across institutions.

We really do not need to be reinventing the wheel, so it makes sense to create tutorials that are generic enough to be used elsewhere, but at the same time allow others to customize them if they so wish. I really would encourage your readers to look at the site and volunteer to develop a tutorial. The goal is to make it a clearing house that librarians can go to for source code for tutorials.

By the way, I really identify with your current cold medicine induced state. Been there, done that (most recently at Access 2006 when a flu hit me right before I had to speak. On the plus side, my voice dropped an octave due to the flu – so I had that Bea Arthur deep authoriative voice to speak with!)

Carmen Kazakoff-Lane

We were very successful in using it to inform our legislators about our statewide library catalog. Conceptually, they just weren’t getting it. But when they saw it in action, it really clicked. We had to do a very important demonostration for some legislators and opted to record it using Camtasia. (We couldn’t be guaranteed the speed and quality of the equipment we’d have in the room we were using.) Camtasia worked wonderfully for this kind of presentation. For the “live” demo, we showed just the video and the presenter read from a script that followed it. We added the audio at a later date and posted it all on our website.

A similar approach could work for demonstrating tools to library boards, commissioners, or community groups when the network resources may not be available in the meeting location.

I think the interesting thing is that, at the time, I would never have said we were “screencasting.” As I read more about it, I realize that, in fact, we were screencasting, we just referred to it as a video.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has used the new Captivate release – it sounds like it offers much better support for branching and other nonlinear methods.

Here’s a link to a very preliminary working bibliography, if anyone’s interested.

Particularly tricky is the bandwidth one. The technology allows me to drop into Captivate video of the participants in the project I describe. I want their voices to be heard too..BUT..like you I think I’ll end up making a low bandwidth one also, with just the audio, not the video – plus no background music.

It’s a real battle between exploiting the technology to the nth degree – because it’s fun, you can, and it gets your message across better…and creating something that everyone can access.

I’ve been working a little differently to you. First I made some postit notes and shuffled them around on my desk to get them in order. Then I made a Captivate slide for each one. I recorded the audio each slide – not using a script, but re-doing it lots of times. If I needed to drop in an animation of the screen, I recorded it and inserted it, cut it back, then recorded the audio. I used the audio editing to cut out lots of “ums and “errs” or just plain idiot-speak. Finally, I let it sit for a few days, then aim to get the audio for each slide tighter and clearer and one third shorter, to really shrink the presentation time.

I think I’d prefer to use something like Captivate for straight podcasting, as you can “sew” the slides together, rather than speaking in one long stream.