Lately I have been spending many hours at work creating tutorials. for our students that will be embedded into our new library website when it launches in the summer. I am beginning with the software called Camtasia by Techsmith. It is a relatively straight forward program that can get very complicated if you’d like it to be. For example, one of my goals is to attach tests to the tutorials that can be embedded in the online classes so that the students can go through the modules and take the tests for class credit. I am looking forward to adding these layers of complexity as well as additional multimedia.
As I create the tutorials I find myself migrating back to all of the repositories we have for academic library tutorials such as: ANTS , PRIMO and LOEX but also to those who make tutorials that just work like Common Craft’s Plain English series or other personal favorites like this one on You_Tube that I find myself using when I teach class. Some of my other out of the box favorites are The Library Minute from ASU recent finds and fav’s are Dupauw’s spoof on the Apple commercial, I love the quick and easy message they convey.
Then there are those in our repositories that I could never recommend. I am so tired of seeing the word doc tutorial, who reads those? or the 10 minute video tutorial, does anyone really stick around that long these days?. What makes me truly annoyed is the lack of closed captioning. I just think it is wrong to leave the hearing impaired out of the screencast tutorial loop.
As we all scramble to help our distance learners and to reach those that can’t make it to the library I believe we should be doing better than just good enough. I know that I am looking forward to the advancement of my own tutorials and I hope to see more innovation coming from my colleagues soon.
The Animated Librarian 
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