Screencasting To Create Online Library Tutorials

This is a follow-up to the October 29, 2006 Library Boy post entitled Free Online Seminar on Screencasting.

On her Information Wants To Be Free blog, Meredith Farkas posted thoughts about screencasting, a technique that allows people to easily create online Flash tutorials:

"What’s so cool about it is the fact that instead of reading a list of instructions on how to use a database or some other tool, a screencast concretely shows the librarian going into the database and executing searches (...) Screencasts are all about video, but often also include audio, captions and even interactive components. You can show a user how to do a search and then have them execute a similar search before the screencast will advance (...) "

"I was blown away by how easy it was to create a Flash movie of your desktop with very little in the way of tech-savvy. You can make a very basic screencast — that you film and narrate simultaneously — in 20 minutes. Or you can spend an entire day or more developing a really polished screencast tutorial. Other than the time invested, screencasts are pretty easy to create."

At the Supreme Court of Canada Library, we have been experimenting with Viewlet technology and have already created a few test tutorials on how to find up-to-date Canadian legislation and Canadian caselaw on a topic and how to note up Canadian cases in various databases such as Quicklaw, WestlaweCarswell, AZIMUT (SOQUIJ) and REJB/DCL (Barreau du Québec/Éditions Yvon Blais).