Attracting users to digital collections

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Attracting users to digital collections

• Michele Reilly
• Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records

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Goals

• Share our experiences and a few others
• Helping end users
• See cool videos
• Not bore you into
• unconsciousness

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Just a little history to get things rolling

• Arizona Memory Project launched in 2006
• 35 cultural institutions participating
• 67 digital collections
• 32000 items

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Why we chose screencasting
Image from Citi-data.com
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Why should you screencast?

• There are benefits for both the
• creator and the user.

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User benefits

• Learn by example
• Convenient
• Appeal to audio/visual learners

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Creator benefits

• Less time spent doing this
• Tutorials of popular searches
• Answer frequently asked questions

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Special searches
AG Opinions
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Screencast as a teaching tool
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What is screencasting?

• Screencasting is a movie that captures the screen
  while a person is narrating the movements.

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What will you need?
Hardware and software considerations.
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Hardware

• Computer
• Microphone

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Software

• Camtasia
• Wink
• Macromedia Captivate
• VewletCam

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Podcasting
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Spice it up with someMusic
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Powerpoint
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Photo editing
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Now the fun begins

• Staff time is about 1 hour per 1 min of video
• Plan well
• Content is King
• Length matters 1-3 minutes is best
• Size matters where bigger is better
• Dont make them scroll.
• Podcasts _at_ 640 x 480
• Think about mobile devices
• No Librarian speak

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Now what do I do with this thing?

• Think social networking
• Give it a place of honor

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Show Tell

• Eastern North Carolina Digital Library

Arizona Memory Project Searching the Arizona
Executive Orders
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Conclusion

• Plan, Practice, Produce

Think like the end user