ANTS Beginnings

This project was an outgrowth of an initiative started by the COPPUL Distance Education Information Literacy Working Group. The group has been in existence since 1998 when it began to look at ways in which institutions could collaborate in the provision of Information Literacy to Distance Education Students.

The first initiative undertaken by the group was the creation of their Doing Research from a Distance online tutorial. It was a comprehensive information literacy tutorial that discussed finding information, evaluating information, citing information, etc. Despite the marketing of it to our Distance Education Students, it was clear by 2004 that the tutorial was getting very little use.

At the same time, newer technology that allowed librarians to quickly capture search screens, add audio or text, and highlight or point to pertinent areas of a search screen, came into existence. This technology was identified as being more user friendly and more interactive. It would also allow librarians to create Point of Need tutorials for highly used electronic resources; but it was recognized that creating and updating an Animated Tutorial for each e-resource would require a lot of work. As a result, in 2004, the COPPUL Distance Education Information Literacy Group was asked to look into ways to enable librarians to collaborate in the development of Point of Need Tutorials.

The group met in September 2004 - along with the Chair of the COPPUL Public Services Group. Several items were identified for development or follow up and by the Spring of 2005 these undertakings were completed. The group subsequently made a presentation about the project to the COPPUL Public Services Group in November 2005 and received some very positive and helpful feedback in the process. This feedback was been integrated into the overall plan for the project that is now underway.

Sharing other Learning Objects in DSpace

One question asked by Public Services Librarians in November was whether or not other Learning Objects could be added to DSpace. After discussing the issue we now wish to say that anyone wishing to share other Learning Objects can register for DSpace and add them to the COPPUL Tutorials site.

Additional discussions about the type of content others would like to see in the project occured when presenters discussed the ANTS project at CLA, Access 2006, and ACRL. Many librarians indicated that they would like to see many different types of tutorials added to the project, and as a result, with we have expanded the project to include any type of library related learning object including:

1. Information Literacy Tutorials Identified for Development,
2. Literacy Tutorials,
3. Data and GIS Library Tutorials, and
4. Tutorials for Handicapped Users

Opening the Project beyond COPPUL

Early into the project discussion arose around opening the project up beyond COPPUL Librarians. Requests were made to expand the project, and in September 2006, the project was given the go ahead to open the project to any librarian.

As a result, this project is now international in scope and open to professional librarians around the globe.


New ANTS Sites

Starting in the Spring of 2007, the ANimated Tutorial Sharing Project introduced a number of new sites.

1. All content found on our old web page (www.brandonu.ca/library/coppul) and our old Wiki (at the University of Winnipeg) was migrated to this Wiki in order to take advantage of its social networking, tagging, sharing and discussion forum features.
2. Responding to concerns that (a) not all SWF files displayed well at DSpace, and (b) that Dspace did not provide embedding code, Paul Pival at the University of Calgary, secured Techsmith's sponsorship and thereby provide us with our Screencast.com site.
3. In reponse to requests to have a YouTube like site, and enable us to Push ANTS content out to popular brand sites, we introduced our LION TV site in May of 2008. To read more about it, click here.