Producing Tutorials With Digital Professionals: Primary Sources, Pirates, and Partners
Once accepted as strictly functional, low-key, step-by-step introductions to services, resources, and how to search databases, library tutorials are now branching out into innovative multi-media Web-based presentations to appeal to a wide audience. Librarians and their instructional materials are taking advantage of an increasingly expanding toolbox of modern technologies and pedagogical techniques to capture the attention not only of students and library patrons, but Web viewers in general. This paper discusses the planning and creative processes involved in producing tutorials that address an identified instructional need using new technologies and a storytelling model. Also addressed are copyright issues, finding public domain images, and working with a production partner that is independent of the library. The videos described here were created to help students and others understand the differences between primary and secondary documents using a storyline based on the popular topic of pirates. The project was made possible by a mini-grant from George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
