Introduction

In today’s fast-paced, multimedia-enriched world, video is everywhere. When you check your weather app you can watch a weather-related video. Check the local or national news by reading the latest update or watching it via a video. You can find more videos on social media—some from your friends . . . and some silly viral videos, too.

With a little effort, libraries can harness videos’ popularity to share information and enhance the library’s marketing and promotion efforts.

My Video Story

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade, we made videos as part of our art class. More specifically, we made short animated videos by moving paper cutouts and telling a short story with them. I was fascinated by the animation process, loved my short video about a goldfish, . . . and was disappointed when something went wrong with the video camera and we couldn’t play my clip for my parents during the parent/teacher conference.

After that introduction, I largely ignored video creation until early 2005, when video on the web started to appear. I had been reading about emerging video trends and was posting about them on my blog. The library where I worked at the time purchased some equipment allowing me to create videos, so I started to experiment and see what I could do.

The gray box below contains a link to my blog post about my first “video podcast” (what vlogging was called back in 2005) and a link to the video (see figure I.1) mentioned in the blog post.

Blog post on David’s first video podcast

www.davidleeking.com/davids-first-video-podcast/

David’s first video podcast

https://archive.org/details/DavidLeeKingFirstVideoPodcastHowtoCreateaVideoPodcast

It’s not a great video by any stretch of the imagination! But it was a start. I was brave enough to figure out the equipment, make a video, publish it on the web, and share it on my blog. (Back then, I probably also shared it on Myspace.) These videos are still archived on the Internet Archive. For some reason, there are two copies stored there, and between the two of them, that early video has been viewed over 400 times. Not bad for my first real video!

Internet Archive

https://archive.org

I should confess that the video mentioned above was actually my second video. My first video was a short video of me being silly. I created a test video to have video footage so I could figure out the process of editing and posting to the web and to my blog. (It was a bit more involved than simply posting to YouTube and embedding video in a blog post back in 2005.)

All that testing and experimenting led to another early video that made a bit of a splash. At the time, I was thinking a lot about Web 2.0 and all the online startup companies that were forming. That thinking developed into a song that I recorded in my basement, along with an accompanying music video. The song is called “Are You Blogging This?” (see figure I.2) and can be watched on YouTube.

Are You Blogging This?

https://youtu.be/V6Kki_WJJRA

That video has been viewed over 55,000 times. It was mentioned in some popular technology blogs at the time—mostly by people who answered the question in the song title by saying, “Yes, I am blogging this!” Then they shared the video on their blogs. It was even mentioned in the USA Today Tech Space blog. That site is no longer online, but I have a screenshot of the article (see figure I.3).

The story of my early video journey illustrates one of my main points: video is a great way to reach people and to help spread the word about your library and the cool, useful stuff you have.

In this publication, we will explore aspects of making and sharing videos:

• Chapter 1: Why Make Video? I’ll share some solid reasoning about why your library should make and post videos. I’ll also share some trends and statistics around the video revolution.
• Chapter 2: Types of Videos to Make. This chapter is all about content. It will introduce you to different types of videos that you might want to create—from interview videos, to explainer videos, to fun videos!
• Chapter 3: Best Practices. There are some handy best practices out there that will help you make an awesome video. This chapter will introduce some of those best practices in order to help you make a video that your customers will want to watch and share.
• Chapter 4: Video Tools and Software. This chapter will focus on equipment and software that you will need to create videos.
• Chapter 5: How to Start. The last chapter will talk about how to start making videos for your library. I’ll provide pointers on planning, gathering a video team, writing a script or outline, and being in front of and behind the camera.

One other thing to mention before we get started. There are a LOT of links to articles and videos throughout this publication, and a bunch of equipment is discussed in chapter 4. I have created a supplement page on my website so you don’t have to type every single link! I hope you find it useful.

Now—let’s learn how to make videos!

Video in Libraries Supplement Page

www.davidleeking.com/video-in-libraries-the-supplement/