Check out our video cameras … literally!

Visitors to the Morristown & Morris Township Library discovered something new to borrow this week: Two Flip video cameras courtesy of MorristownGreen.com, our hyperlocal website. Members are encouraged to borrow the cameras  and upload local video to our site, sharing it with others in the community.

To promote the arrival of the cameras, our local maestro Kevin Coughlin arranged for The Star-Ledger’s film critic Stephen Whitty to introduce a movie as part of the library’s weekly film series, then used the occasion to announce a video contest with a nice set of prizes: tickets to the NY Film Critics Series.

We hope the simplicity of the Flips and the prospect of finding a local audience will encourage people to contribute to the already-rich smorgasbord at MorristownGreen.com — but we’ll also offer some training seminars soon for those who might feel intimidated by the idea of shooting and editing video.

With any luck, this small investment (the cameras only cost about a hundred bucks each) will pay big dividends. I’ll report back on the results as they come in…

P.S. — Apologies for the radio silence these past few weeks. We’ve been busy at The Star-Ledger. The good news is that all that work will produce lots of good things to blog about in the weeks to come. Stay tuned.