Written by Kay Clopton, the Mary P. Key Resident of Cultural Diversity for the University Libraries.

I work for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum and I was supposed to give a tour to a Comparative Studies class this Spring. Those plans were thwarted by the current pandemic, but I offered to create a video for the class so that they could get a virtual tour. What I did not anticipate was having to film the tour in a hurry because of the notification that people were being told to leave campus immediately, so I ran up to our galleries, filmed at least six versions of an impromptu introduction, and toured our galleries while describing the materials as if I were giving the tour. Having filmed this on my phone gave me the ability to use the cloud storage to later access the raw data.

However, there was one other issue: I wasn’t exactly trained on editing video outside of trimming videos I would film for church. So I also had to learn how to become an editor and find software that would allow me to take all of the raw data and turn it into something watchable. I researched and found a free editing program, OpenShot Video Editor, that allowed me to learn as I went while putting the video together, and I also found some free music to add to the video to keep it from being just me and my footfalls in the galleries. The video was sent to the instructor for the class and turned out to be very useful and well received (I also passed the video along to my colleagues at the Billy Ireland who also thought it was pretty good). Ultimately, it was an interesting experience where I learned more about my capabilities as an instructor by adapting a tour to a virtual experience. I was able to give the students an experience of visiting the gallery and giving information as if they were there, and by being available afterwards for questions via email, I feel the students were given the best experience possible under the circumstances.