A Call for Collaboration–Library Olympics

This is a project I’ve wanted to do…basically since I started this site. I always thought it would be funny to do a Library Olympics and “compete” with other libraries. To me, putting a sports spoof on what we do is always funny. But more than that, libraries love to collaborate, even though we are all competing with each other to an extent.

That’s also what this blog is about. And I always liked sharing all of my ideas, as you can tell from the everything on here. I’ve tried sharing my videos for general use, but that’s harder since your patrons have no idea who I am, so you would need to be in the video too somehow.

So I never knew how to pull off this project. I’ve thought of “competing” with neighboring libraries, and that’s how this project first started this year, but then I thought of how to potentially make it larger so that ANY library could “compete” with me.

So here’s how it works. I made a video–complete with bumpers, sound effects, music, and transitions. You can watch it here, notice the blank spot that says “Your Video Here”:

I made it all in Canva. Like I said in my last blog entry about summer movies, if you can make a Powerpoint, you can make a movie. Your slides are just your scenes. So you can add to the movie, download the whole bundle, and then upload it to your library’s social media.

Not only that, if you look at my Canva project, you’ll be able to see some really advanced tricks and skills that you can incorporate into your own projects. So this isn’t just for fun, this is a learning opportunity.

So if you want to compete with me, here’s all you have to do:

1) Watch the video. This is just to get an idea of what the basic premise is. The first game we are doing is a “shh”ing competition, I might make some more videos if there’s a HUGE response.

2) Film your segment. Make it as long as you want, but shorter is usually better. Just have fun with it and match the silliness of the whole piece.

3) Upload you segment. Send me your email in the “Contact” section of the site. Don’t put it in the Comments. I’ll send you the link to my Canva file. It was originally going to be a completely open Canva file that anyone could edit freely, but I got spammers right away, because we just can’t have anything nice! So this will have to do–send me your email, and I’ll send you the Canva file.

One quick note, you will need CanvaPro to download the file in the end. BUT it is currently free to all non-profits, so there’s really no excuse for a library to NOT have it, since you can do so much more with Pro than the base model. You can also get a 30 day free trial of Pro if your library can’t get the non-profit version for some reason.

4) Add the flair. This part is optional I suppose, but adding that extra flair makes the video pop more and seem more polished. You can add Audio to your segment. Go to the “Apps” button on the side and type in “Audio.” Again, you will need CanvaPro. Manipulating the audio is just like on iMovie, so Google it if you’re having problems.

You can also overlay shapes and fonts like I did on my video, to make the name bumpers like you would find on an actual news report. When you have those shapes or fonts highlighted, you can click on “Animations” to move them in and out of the frame.

I think that covers it. Contact me through the site if you have any questions. This is a brand-new experiment for me, so excited to see if anyone is interested!

Outcome:

I was able to partner with a local library with a large social media presence, so it was a great partnership. I had only one other library outside of my local library system about collaborating, so that was a bit of a bummer. But I still had fun making these. Here’s the final product, we decided to only make the two–they got a lot of traffic and a lot of parents came and liked talking to me about them:

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