This is what Lotse, Library Online Tour and Self-Paced Education (http://lotse.uni-muenster.de), currently does. It offers information and tutorials for all themes in information literacy. This is done on a collaborative basis:

The editorial staff for general information is situated in Muenster, Germany. Then there are local university libraries with their experts all over Germany and Austria, and finally we’ve got editors who are experts for the different subjects (Economics, History, Physics to name but a few). All editors work together to write and update the information given.

We are currently redesigning and restructuring Lotse and will try to create multimedia tutorials in information literacy on a collaborative basis.

If you’re interested, have a look at http//lotse.uni-muenster.de or our blog at http://lotse.sub.uni-hamburg.de/blog/ where we document ideas and results.
Unfortunately, it’s all in German – so if you don’t know German, contact me via Mail and I’ll be glad to explain more. If you do, feel free to comment in our blog.

Duncan, thanks for pointing out the source code for tutorials on ANTS. I knew that they were Creative Commons licensed, but hadn’t realized that the source files were available, too.

1. Give up control. Let the students use what they see they need. When they need it. That seems to work really well in our open stacks. Why not in information literacy instruction?

2. Learning is always a local phenomenon. Learning is always a custom job. There is always room for a personal, customizable, and local approach to learning.

Part of my job description is information literacy, so many of the tutorials I’ve created are instruction that is suitable for in-house use only. Particularly, as we have more distance students returning to study mid-life who find electronic libraries challenging, I aim many of my tutorials at them.

The remaining tutorials are created for in-house use, but also with an eye to submitting them as part of the Animated Tutorial Sharing Project (ANTS). The ANTS wiki has more information on what we do and all are welcome to join and participate. http://ants.wetpaint.com/

The ANTS tutorials are produced under a Creative Commons share alike licence, and while some images that show local material are unavoidable, the focus is on producing tutorials that are generic enough to apply to other libraries.

ANTS provides people with access to Shockwave Flash Files, Tutorial Source Code (Camatisia, Captivate or Viewletbuilder Files) and Embedding Code for SWF, FLV and AVI files.

To access the Source code or Shockwave Flash Files, go to our DSpace location at:

https://dspace.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/43471

To access the Embedding Code for Flash Movie Files (.FLV) – or to access .FLV, .MPEG 4 or .AVI Files go to our site at LION TV and look under each Episode’s Files and Links.

http://liontv.blip.tv/

To access Embedding Code for SWF Files, go to our Screencast.Com site and look under each broadcast. Files will be listed below.

(http://www.screencast.com/users/ants

Andy, that’s an interesting idea to involve students in tutorial creation. At my library we’ve discussed asking for student help with orientation/tour kinds of videos, but I bet they’d have an interesting take on instructional videos as well.

Laura, I’ve also thought along the lines of reusable videos that could be locally branded. My college is part of a large university system so I think this could work well for our OPAC especially. We do have a university-wide Information Literacy committee but we have been too busy with other projects to take this on (yet).

Kim, I agree that tech issues can be sticky with creating tutorials, esp. if you don’t have the ability to modify your library’s website. We are dipping a toe into tutorial creation and will be posting the resulting videos on YouTube for now, which is one way that I’ve seen other libraries go.

But time constraints are a real factor…so I’m at a place of picking and choosing. I like Laura H.’s idea of a Library JibJab…but also librarians consciously licensing their materials (when possible) as Creative Commons might also help.

Interesting post…we’ve been talking about this topic just recently.

I have embedded one or two into the Blackboard course materials. Because of admin restriction I cannot post links on our website. What I had not thought about before I read your article was the idea of usability and branding. I thought that any good information the student would get from us would be beneficial, no matter where it originated from.

I’ve tried using Captivate to create my own tutorials, but it is very time consuming and complicated. The finished product is not as good as ones I can get from other libraries. So, I’m going to keep using what is already out there, until I have more time or more skills to create my own tutorials.

There is also a relatively low “failure barrier” with tutorials. At novice levels, many of the skills necessary to create a more dramatic, long or production-intensive product just aren’t there. You don’t want, for example, a first time script writer to try to write a 2.5 hour screenplay. The pressure is too high and the price of failure — for him/herself and the rest of the team — can be problematic. Tutorials make a good “cutting your teeth” project to help students understand the basics and interdependencies of multi-media production.

In many organizations, tutorials take back-burner, since they’re often considered a “nice-to-have” rather than a “got-to-have.” If you turn the creation of them into a student-based, multi-disciplinary project, the final output will be (often) higher quality, everyone gets to learn something, and you end up with great tutorials and better informed students.