… Video, anyway …

On January 7, 2009 I took a revamped version of my “Introduction to RefWorks” presentation to a group of doctoral students in the iSchool. This is similar to the classes that I give each semester as a RefWorks instructor for Syracuse University Library.

Since many of them are distance students (and, additionally, the weather was truly vile that day), the class was only attended in person by one student. The intention of the instructor, Angela Ramnarine-Rieks, was that we make a video of the instruction session that would be distributed via the university’s Ensemble video server and that the students could review it at any time as they began their research.

(WMV 01:13:27)

Although I targeted my selection of search examples to my intended audience of iSchool doctoral candidates, I think the video does a pretty good job covering all the basics of getting started in using RefWorks. Because I knew I was doing a video, that could be paused and rewound, I gave the presentation at a brisk pace, although I tried to pause at obvious stopping points where the viewer might try out what I had been demonstrating.

My PowerPoint slide pack is published on SlideShare. In addition, I formatted the slides, together with my speaking notes, as 77 page PDF handout and reformatted for printing double-sided as a 40 page (20 physical sheets) PDF booklet.

In the class, I handed out the library’s “Introducing RefWorks” short guide as well as a list of tips for exporting citations to RefWorks from some select information science databases and Google Scholar, and the library’s OPAC. I provided links to the more in-depth “Quick Start Guide” that RefWorks publishes and the library’s RefWork Help page.