Using Videos to Reach Site Visitors: A Toolkit for Today's Student.

Abstract

Today's students have grown up in an information environment very different from the one that many people remember. They have been raised on the fast-paced edutainment of "Sesame Street" and have spent their adolescence watching 3-minute music videos on MTV. Their media environment specializes in short messages and multimedia, with news dispatched in sound bites and snippets of stories. The students who grew up in these media streams now are watching and creating online video. They know how to type something in a Google search bar and get a useful result. They use tags in Flickr and del.icio.us to find things relevant to their interests. These users represent a potential need to change how librarians approach providing services for this generation. In this article, the author describes a tutorial toolkit that she and another librarian have created for today's students. The toolkit is simple, reusable, easy to update, and useful in a number of different contexts. It is a searchable and browsable system of short videos that teach specific, concrete skills. In addition, it also allows other reference librarians, subject specialists, and possibly library school interns to contribute tutorials.

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