Finding professionals to shadow is easier than I expected - I never thought so many people would be interested in helping students on assignments, especially people who aren't even involved with the university.
But I did want to thank my tech-professional who I shadowed earlier this month: Mr. S. He taught me so much about programming. Not only that, but he introduced me to others on his team so I could really get a rounded idea of how the team dynamics worked.
I have decided that I will probably never get into programming - at least not to the extent that Mr. S. is - but I did really enjoy seeing the background of programs I never used to give a second thought to.
Thanks Mr. S.!
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Camtasia
I spent some quality time these last few weeks playing around with Camtasia for class. I used it once before during my internship, but that was under the supervision of a librarian so I didn't have as much time to explore the different tools and functions.
Overall, I really enjoy Camtasia. I think it's a great way to create instructional videos. I tried a couple different techniques to see what would work best for me. Here are my notes on these techniques:
My hope is to work in a library where I will have the opportunity to use Camtasia again; I really enjoyed the program.
Overall, I really enjoy Camtasia. I think it's a great way to create instructional videos. I tried a couple different techniques to see what would work best for me. Here are my notes on these techniques:
- Record Video and Audio Simultaneously: Disaster! Do not attempt! Okay, so maybe it wouldn't be a disaster for everyone. But inevitably I would stutter on the last page or I would be tapping my finger impatiently waiting for the page to load and the mic would pick that tapping up. So, not the best technique.
- Record Video, Audio Over: I didn't get it right the first time, or even the second time. But it didn't go too horribly. I ended up recording the video twice, and I don't even know how many times I did the audio before I was okay with it.
My hope is to work in a library where I will have the opportunity to use Camtasia again; I really enjoyed the program.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Technology and Reference Librarianship
I consider myself to be very lucky with my fieldwork. The many librarians I worked with were very enthusiastic about the technology they had available. A few of the programs that were used were brought up in class this week, which made me think of all of the other cool programs I learned about while I was there.
Gimlet: Gimlet was a website that we used to track questions and answers that were asked throughout the library. Each library department could post to it, and then tag it as directional, technological, or reference. They could also tag who asked (i.e., student, faculty, community, unknown). The website allowed searches to be run on questions for keywords in any time frame, and would also run reports on number of questions, where the questions were asked, which department answered, etc.
Camtasia: This program intimidated me at first, but in the end I feel like I had the hang of it. We used it to make video tutorials of different subjects. I helped with several videos, but the one that was 90% my work is posted below. The program allowed us to chop out bits of the video/audio, record over the video, call out segments, etc.
Pidgen: This was the chat program we used which worked like most other IMs. I was not a fan of this program, but more because of the inappropriate questions than the program itself...
LibApp: This was through Springshare, and it was used to create LibGuides. Before working at the reference desk, I didn't have much interest in creating LibGuides. Before I was done, I was loving it. It was a great resource to direct students to when they needed a direction to research. Two examples of LibGuides I created using this are below:
Gimlet: Gimlet was a website that we used to track questions and answers that were asked throughout the library. Each library department could post to it, and then tag it as directional, technological, or reference. They could also tag who asked (i.e., student, faculty, community, unknown). The website allowed searches to be run on questions for keywords in any time frame, and would also run reports on number of questions, where the questions were asked, which department answered, etc.
Camtasia: This program intimidated me at first, but in the end I feel like I had the hang of it. We used it to make video tutorials of different subjects. I helped with several videos, but the one that was 90% my work is posted below. The program allowed us to chop out bits of the video/audio, record over the video, call out segments, etc.
Pidgen: This was the chat program we used which worked like most other IMs. I was not a fan of this program, but more because of the inappropriate questions than the program itself...
LibApp: This was through Springshare, and it was used to create LibGuides. Before working at the reference desk, I didn't have much interest in creating LibGuides. Before I was done, I was loving it. It was a great resource to direct students to when they needed a direction to research. Two examples of LibGuides I created using this are below:
So, overall, I guess my point is just that technology is cool. It's cool in any part of the library. Someday, I may even get around to posting about how the archives use technology. It's a total combination of the old and the new!
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