Off-Campus Library Services Conference (Day 2 and 3)

Hi all,

I've been attending a number of workshops these past two days and have finally had a chance to go through my notes and recap the many great ideas I've been exposed to as far as providing more dynamic library service to distance learners.

I've been very interested lately in how different academic libraries are creating online tutorials that teach their users how to utilize particular library resources, such as the library catalog, different databases, and more. I attended two workshops, "Using Online Tutorials to Reduce Uncertainty in Information Seeking Behavior" (presented by Elizabeth Jean Brumfield of Prairie View A&M University) and "Visual Tutorials for Point of Need Instruction in Online Courses" (presented by Debra Kimok and Holly Heller-Ross of State University of New York at Plattsburgh). The first workshop discussed more theoretical aspects of why online tutorials are useful for helping users through the emotional and cognitive issues that can arise when dealing with information retrieval (in our case, conducting research in an academic library with huge print and electronic collections). The second workshop focused more on the practical aspects of developing screencasts ("movies of whatever is happening on your computer screen," as explained by Paul Betty, another presenter at the conference) to walk users through the process of how to access and use different library resources (e.g., how to use the Academic Search Elite database). The librarians presenting this workshop also talked about how they integrated their tutorials and screencasts into online classes, research guides, and chat reference interviews.

Today, I attended a third workshop on screencasting (for the purposes of library tutorials), and I learned of some open source screencasting freeware as well as how to utilize Google Analytics to assess use of these types of screencasts serving as tutorials to help librarians figure out how to improve content and design based on how users navigate the screencast. I also learned more about ANTS (Animated Library Tutorials Project) where librarians can share their online tutorials with one another under Creative Commons License.

More to come about my visit to the zine collection at the Salt Lake City Public Library!

Thanks for reading,
Annie