Jing is a free download. It's a program that allows you to select a portion of your screen -- say, the browser window -- and record it live, synchronized with whatever you're saying into your computer's microphone. Then with a click of a button, it uploads your little makeshift video to screencast.com and puts a link to your video on your clipboard so you can paste it somewhere -- like to that patron you're busy chatting with! Anyone who clicks that link will view your video.
Just tonight, someone popped in to the library's chat and wanted to know how to find the full text of a particular journal article. I did a quick check and discovered that, yes, we owned that article in full text! So, mad scientist-like, I scrambled to whip up a frothy video tutorial concoction. I launched Jing and recorded a mini-tutorial, stepping through searching for the full-text of that journal article. Voila, there it was! Fewer than 4 minutes later, I pasted the link to the video into our chat, and wound up with one happy customer who followed the steps, got the article, and in the process learned how to search for full text in the future, too.
This is awesome!
Things to remember when using Jing or other on-the-fly video generating apps:
- It's not good for everything. Think of situations like mine where there is a series of well-defined steps that you're trying to get across. You wouldn't want to do this to record a bunch of attempts to try different keywords in different databases, for example.
- Don't worry about polish. Just click through the steps. Don't rush, but don't go agonizingly slow, either: the video can always be paused, after all!
- If you make a typo, don't start over, just backspace! At the reference desk, you can't turn back time because you made a typo... right? (If you actually can turn back time, drop me an e-mail, please. I want to know your secret.)
- Go through the steps. Mention any salient points, but don't expound or theorize or embellish or be redundant or flowery. You know, like that last sentence. The video should be relatively short. And more than likely, there's someone waiting for you to finish it!
- If you're doing this from your own personal computer, you might want to make sure you're not capturing a browser session with a bunch of tabs open to things that are NSFW. I'm just sayin'.
- When you first install Jing, do a test run or two. Record something, play it back. How is the audio? Is your mic picking up your voice? Are keyboard and mouse clicks popping too loudly? Think about adjusting your setup to compensate before doing a "real" video.
- Have fun! Don't stress. Just tell the person in chat that you're putting together instructions for them and you'll be right back. Record, save, send the link on over. Don't overthink it. It's just a tool, after all... helping you be that awesome reference librarian that you are.