Background:
Currently, there are 150 students each semester who come to the library for a walking tour. This is a required assignment for a particular basic skills English professor. Each tour takes 30-40 minutes. Five dates are scheduled and students must sign up in advance, which helps in staffing the sessions. (This fall semester 138 students signed up and 131 students attended.) Two or three library technicians and/or librarians are scheduled for each date, which generally take place in weeks two and three.
Proposal:
I would like to offer 5-6 vodcasts of the library tour. A vodcast, or video podcast would provide flexibility for the student to take a tour when it was convenient for them. Each short vodcast could cover a different area and/or service in the library. We could go into more detail about a service than we can with the walking tour. We could also inject some humor and musical background into the vodcasts, which might make them more appealing.
An example of a humorous library tour from Otis College Library can be viewed on YouTube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pS28qydjfsg
There were five favorable comments, e.g. "This is actually a good video about a library. I like it."
These tours would also be available to the occasional student who asks for a tour of the library.
5 comments:
Great idea. Vodcasts for the English 400 students would certainly relieve the library staff from repeating the same information so many times.
I would certainly like to see some humor and music in these vodcasts to make it more appealing to this generation of students.
I think Vodcasts would be a great idea for our library. As you said, this would allow for the students to take the tour when they have the time.
Of course the idea of humor and music is high on my list of good ideas.
"Traditional" students have grown up with technology and will appreciate this type of tour.
You could also create a vodcast to offer tips on accessing and searching your electronic databases.
I especially like the idea of injecting humor.
I think you have a great idea. The proposal was organized, and your research supports your ideas. We had a walking tour of our own library on DVD, which included basic research techniques, but without the humor I'm sorry to say...
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