Screencasting 101

I'm a genius!

Haha - ok, that's not true. But, I felt like one after completing this special project at work. As I waited for it to load on YouTube, "We Are the Champions" was playing on my life soundtrack.

Last week was a completely different story. My boss called me into his office & said,"I have a great idea! You should do a web tutorial about the library for our physicians!!". He was super-duper, uber excited about it - and I am grossly under-exaggerating his emotions here. And all the while I sat, my nodding, smiley-faced facade bopping right along to the beat of his absolute glee, while the real me was cowering in the corner, frozen with a panicked fear... and nearly wetting my pants.

I thought, "Well, the gig is up. Now they are really going to know that I have no idea how to be a librarian." Talk to any post-library school student and they will tell you the intense theoretical approach is lovely & all, but does absolutely nothing to prepare you for THIS.

After the joyous celebrations of the "Best Idea Ever!!" were over, my boss got up, gave me the "thumbs-up" sign and whisked me out of his office. Ready, set, go - Madam Librarian... except I totally had no clue what I was doing. NO CLUE .

But what I lack in know-how, I make up for in resourcefulness. I zipped an email to a techno-geek colleague, whose responses are not only extremely informative, but incredibly expeditious too. Armed with her suggestions, I downloaded three different programs, spent hours reading online tutorials, made some Powerpoint slides, made a bajillion calls to our IT department when everything I downloaded was blocked, and then finally, I borrowed a microphone.

Funny thing, that microphone/headset-y thing. The dude from IT came up to deliver it to me. Only thing is Mr. IT Dude had no idea how to use it or set it up. He just tossed it to me and said, "Well, good luck then!". Not to knock our IT department, but seriously? I spent a couple of hours playing with it, but I figured it out, more or less.

Now just a week later, I'm finished with my first tutorial. I must have a guardian/librarian angel; with all the obstacles and knowledge gaps I was facing, it's nothing short of a miracle that this little video came to fruition. Some of my audio is a bit clunky - in hindsight, should have written a script - and the mouse had some annoying, weird delays, but all in all, the project came together pretty nicely. Cue that choir of angels, my friends!