Loading ...There has been an awful lot written about Flickr, one of the top online photo-sharing sites. I’m not out to re-create the wheel, so here is an excellent slideshow presentation on what Flickr is, from Michael Sauers, the Travelin’ Librarian.
- It’s another way to not “silo” your library’s unique visual information. In this era when competition to library web sites is one click away, it’s essential that we put our content out into the community, where the people are more likely to be. No, not everyone even knows Flickr exists. But a whole lot more know about Flickr than about your library’s website, guaranteed.
- When it comes to promotion, a picture says a 1000 words…or more. Grab the digital camera, a stack of photo waivers and the name of your Flickr account, and head to your library’s next event. Tell people their pics will be online for them to see in the next day or two. Watch them get excited.
- Flickr is incredibly cheap. Even the smallest library can afford the approximately $25.00 a year for an incredibly large amount of photo storage.
- It requires no special knowledge to upload, tag and caption photos for viewing. No waiting for a web person to get around to marking up photos and getting them online.
- Flickr is about sharing, and Flickr has chosen to share its API (Application Programming Interface, if you want to know). That means they allow anyone to create useful and fun third-party applications using the underlying Flickr engine. Need an automatic slideshow? A randomly-rotating photo area for your library’s blog? Even a game based on your photos? Somebody has already created the code for these kinds of things, and many more, and you can plug them right into your website or blog for instant gratification and content.
But what about…
- Bad apples? Like most modern (Web 2.0) web sites, Flickr provides functionality to allow users to comment on pictures. Yes, you might get some bad comments. Don’t let them spoil the entire barrel for you. The Internet is really all about people. Some behave themselves, some don’t. Most people understand that. Move on.
- Branding? More traditional librarians may have a hard time moving past the “It’s not our stuff” issue. The thinking is along the lines of “If the site is not totally branded as being that of the library, it’s not worthwhile.” However, this is symptomatic of siloing. If you hear this argument, point them at the photostream of the Library of Congress. Even the LOC has figured out that siloing is poor practice, and that the real goal is to share the content, not brand it.
- High quality images? Flickr cannot replace high-quality systems like ContentDM, that also provide all of the metadata libraries need. Flickr is best used for more casual or immediate content (like event photos), or as a supplemental way (such as in the case of the Library of Congress) to get to photos.
Does your (Ohio) library have a Flickr stream or cool Flickr-related application? Send me the URL and I’ll post ‘em here!
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I am hoping, nay, I’m practically praying, that your library does not have either of the following:
- A collection of links to external websites (often called “Links” or the “Link Library” on the library’s web site, or
- Bunches of sites bookmarked at the Reference Desk that staff use to find information for patrons.
Why do I have these in my craw today? Because these practices “silo” information; they take valuable, vetted resources and put them in places where your patrons either aren’t looking, aren’t going to look, and/or can’t get to. “Siloing” (Is that a word? I guess it is now.) is a common practice in libraries, and one that we may not even be aware that we’re doing. As librarians, we like to collect and organize information. That’s fine, keep doing it! It’s just time to update your methodology, so that you can serve more people, better.
It’s time to move your link collections out of the silos and out onto the public floor. In this case, the “public floor” is a web service called del.icio.us (yes, they took the .US domain and had fun with the address). This is the most popular social bookmarking site, and it solves several issues for link collecting all at once:
- Ever been at work and wished you had your bookmarks from your home computer, or vice-versa? Yeah, I’ve been there. Not anymore. Del.icio.us stores your bookmarks in a web-accessible account, so anywhere you have net access, you have your bookmarks.
- This is a social bookmarking site. Other people can see what you’ve bookmarked, you can see what they’ve bookmarked, and you can even see how many people have bookmarked a particular site. Yes, this is a great voyeuristic way to kill an afternoon…and find great new resources.
- You can tag your bookmarks for easy retrieval, and del.icio.us even provides ways to embed a tag cloud directly into your web site of your collection for visual browsing.
- You automatically get an RSS feed of your collection that patrons can subscribe to.
- Yes, you can link directly to your del.iciou.us account from your library’s web page.
Signing up is free and easy, and there are even browser buttons for both Internet Explorer and Firefox to make adding things to your account incredibly simple. Want to learn more about del.icio.us? Here’s the About page.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO ME, LAURA?
- It’s time to get all those research links, wherever they might be, out into the Internet community where they can do some good. Let’s be honest here, shall we? People are not looking at library web sites any more for links. That’s what Google is for.
- In this new(ish) digital age, most things online have a social element. Don’t be antisocial.
- No more waiting for your web person to add links to your site. You can DIY and get more functionality out of your link collections, with built-in RSS and tagging, and many third-party applications.
