With the upgrade to Summon 2.0 back in September 2013 I was faced with having to update some of our video tutorials. The previous videos were made using the traditional screen capture and commentary method – all very useful. All very instructive.
However I had two concerns about doing like for like remakes. Firstly I hate the sound of my own voice so the idea of recording a voiceover and then having to listen to it let alone share it with others wasn’t something I was very keen on. Secondly I find screencasts incredibly BORING and actually finding one you can sit through let alone enjoy is really difficult. So I wanted to try something a little different.
The inspiration
Don’t get me wrong there are some great video tutorials out there. University of Sunderland for example have lots really useful screencast style short videos and I particularly like the following from Arizona State University and Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries:
Finding these and others almost made things worse because I knew I didn’t have the time or resources to do something similar and every day I kept seeing the Camtasia icon on my desktop silently mocking my attempts to avoid the inevitable.
Then one day I came across a short animated video that caught my attention and at the end of the video the words: “Created using PowToon” popped up and I knew this was just what I had been looking for.
For anyone who hasn’t heard of PowToon before it’s an online presentation tool that allows you to create free animated videos and presentations just by dragging and dropping characters and objects. Finished videos can then be exported straight to YouTube.
My videos
The main goal for my first video was to present Summon in a fun and engaging way and even if the only thing people remembered was how to find Summon on the University website that would be enough for me to consider the video a success. My approach however was maybe a little unconventional.
youtube by Sean MacEntee (CC BY 2.0)
I had a series of images in my head I knew I wanted to use but essentially it all began with the music. I’d found some fantastic creative commons stuff on http://freemusicarchive.org which I knew would be perfect. So instead of merely being an afterthought the music became the main creative inspiration behind the whole video. It helped me determine what movements the characters should make, how long each scene should last and how the transitions should look.
I had lots of fun with the first Summon video, received positive feedback from colleagues and apparently it even got shown during a Summon demonstration at the National Library of Scotland.
So feeling encouraged to continue with PowToon I tried to focus my next series of videos on answering one question while still including music and some hopefully humorous touches (well humorous to me anyway):
How to renew a book online:
How to search for a journal article in Summon:
How to refine your search in Summon:
I was now starting to feel a little more confident and decided I really wanted to tell a story. So once again I started with a simple question: “How do I find databases relevant to my subject?”
In truth this could have been a 20 second video featuring nothing more than a few mouse clicks but where’s the fun in that. So instead I devised a scenario in which in order to rescue his girlfriend the main character has to access an English database. This of course sounds utterly ridiculous but was my attempt to try and use the power of storytelling to answer a simple question in an entertaining way.
Again I got more positive feedback and we even got a mention from ProQuest:
I fully accept that there will be people who think these videos are silly, amateurish and largely unhelpful but the point is that with the amount of free resources now available there is just no excuse for producing videos that do little more than bore your audience. Why not try something a little different?
Sadly I haven’t had time to work on new videos lately however with ProQuest moving LION onto a new (and much better platform) I will once again be faced with having to re-make a Library video. At this point I have no idea what I’m going to do but I’m sure I’ll have fun experimenting.
Pretending to be a librarian 