Animoto is a service that makes it simple to turn a group of photographs into a music video. You can upload your pictures from your computer or pull them in from another photo site like Flickr, choose some music from Animoto’s collection or upload your own, and then let Animoto create your video. It takes about ten minutes for your video to be ready, and if you don’t like the results, you can run it through again and get a remix. It’s free to make 30 second videos, and you can make longer ones for $3.00 each or $30.00 a year.

Animoto just added a new feature which will be great for libraries — the ability to superimpose text across your pictures. This makes it easy to take a group of pictures from the Children’s Room and have words like “Come to story hour” and “Get help with homework” float across the screen. It’s really easy to use, and the video you make can be uploaded to YouTube or posted to your blog or website.

Here’s a quick example, just a remix of one of my first test videos I made several months ago, remixed with a few words added. It’s really easy to make these, and just another way to show off your library pictures!

And you also might want to use this as a library program. Kids and teens (or anyone, actually) will also enjoy playing around with this their own photographs with Animoto.