Screencasting and Podcasting: Experience of the Yale Medical Library

Screencast i ng and Podcast i ng
Experience of the Yale Medical Library
Lei Wang October 24, 2008 Wallingford, CT

Outline
Why this project?
Project overview and demo
Cost and cost-effectiveness
Tips and tricks

Why this project?

User community

“ We wanted to go to your classes, but we’re kinda stuck here.”

The new digital library environment

Electronic resource expenditure at Yale Medical Library

Gate counts at Yale Medical Library

In-library patrons

A new generation of users

Why this project?
Decentralized, busy user community with a relatively small student population
The new digital environment at medical libraries
A new generation of users

Project overview

Created 50+ online video tutorials about the most frequently taught library skills;
Distributed the tutorials in Flash as well as the iPod compatible formats;
Collected and analyzed usage data for these tutorials.
What we did

Budget Constraints

Media production software Camtasia Studio Audacity Quicktime Pro

Media file and feed hosting services Libsyn Blogger Feedburner

Statistics services Libsyn Feedburner

Hardware Microphone and accessories

Staff time

1 hour per minute of video

Cost
You can use free tools or tools with minimum cost to do a screencast / podcast project;
On average, expect to spend 1 hour of staff time for 1 minute of video.

Cost-effectiveness

What are we trying to measure?
Did they need what we delivered?
Did they get what we delivered when they needed it?
Did they learn from what we delivered after they got it?

Two kinds of usage data
Media file download / access statistics
Feed / subscription statistics

Download statistics from Libsyn for mov / m4v files

Download statistics from Statcounter for swf files

47,275 downloads!

Subscriber statistics from Feedburner

Subscriber downloads VS. non-subscriber downloads

Total video downloads VS. reference & education activities

Campus IPs VS non-campus IPs

Video downloads from campus IPs VS. reference & education activities

Video production hours VS. instructor hours

Cost-effectiveness
Compared with traditional reference and education statistics, screencast / podcast projects prove to be cost-effective.

Tips and tricks

Content is king.

Plan well.

Length matters.

“ I shall be so brief that I have already finished.” -- Salvador Dalí

Recommendations
About 1 – 3 minutes is best.
Ask yourself: what can I teach in 1 – 3 minutes?
If your video HAS to be longer, use TOC menus.

Size matters. Tips and tricks

Screen resolution statistics from Google Analytics

Recommendations
Don’t make your users scroll.
Use 640 x 480 for podcast compatibility.
Use the “zoom-and-pan”, “auto-pan”, or “smart-focus” features in screencast software to solve screen size problems.

Nobody likes to be lectured to.

“ This tutorial demonstrates the subject heading search function of the Orbis catalog ...” “ In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to find a book in the library by subject ...”

Recommendation
Use an informal, familiar, first-person tone.
Please, no librarian-speak.

Audio quality matters.

Recommendations
Use a uni-directional USB mic.
Learn to use your software applications’ noise reduction or audio enhancement features.
Practice, practice, practice!

File size or video quality?

Connection speed statistics from Google Analytics

Recommendations
Use mono audio only.
The less motion in your video, the smaller the file size.
About 1 MB per minute of video is the norm.

Tips and tricks
Content is king, so plan well.
1 - 3 minutes long is best.
Use 640 x 480 screen size.
Use an informal, familiar, first-person tone.
Spend time improving audio quality.
Balance file size and video quality.

Outline
Why this project?
Project overview and demo
Cost and cost-effectiveness
Tips and tricks

Happy screencasting and podcasting!

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Screencasting and Podcasting: Experience of the Yale Medical Library

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