WebJunction

Flickr is one of the best known of several Web 2.0 photo-sharing sites. I am myself a Flickr fan (or Flickrite, as we refer to ourselves). I first joined Flickr as a 50th birthday present to myself, and within a very short span of time found myself using my digital camera and Flickr for all kinds of work-related purposes I had never dreamed of when I got the account.

With all the Web 2.0 applications I've used, there has been one defining moment or use that clarified why this was a useful cool—an Aha! moment. With Flickr, I think that came for me when I had a book that was damaged and the staff did not agree about which repair workflow it should be sent into. I snapped a pic, uploaded it to Flickr, and emailed the head of book repair for thoughts. This replaced either playing phone tag or emailing back and forth with verbal descriptions of the damage and answering questions about the rest of the item. It truly was "one picture is worth a thousand words."

Since then, I've used Flickr in many different ways, but find they fall primarily into two types of activities, both of which are simply much easier to do with Flickr than without.

1. Collecting and organizing images into task or topic specific groupings that are quickly and easily created and shared.
    
2. Easily incorporating images into web pages and blogs, in various sizes or resolutions of the images, without needing photo-editing software, while saving server space, webmaster time.

Here are a variety of ideas for how to make use of Flickr in library environments for both productivity and pleasure. Most of these I've done myself, but a few are things I'm planning to do or have seen done by other libraries.

Things To Do

Services For Your Regular Patrons:

• Answer reference questions. With older materials that are not online yet, sharing the answers you've found often requires retyping the text (to deliver by email) or photocopying and mailing to the patron. With Flickr, you can take a hi-resolution photo of the relevant text and title page, saving time and convenience, and enabling other patrons to access material without further handling.
• Meet immediate image needs for patrons by photographing a page. This is often simpler than scanning, especially from fragile or non-circulating items.
• Create library photo-tours.
• Take photos of landmarks around campus to create way-finding tools.
• Embed "slideshows" in blogs or web pages using SlideFlickr.com.

With Community Groups:

• Start a Flickr group for your Friends of the Library.
• Share images from library, campus, and community events.
• Find Flickr groups of interest to your community, and promote the groups or specific images.
• Create Flickr groups to build awareness of and communities for your interests or special resources.
• Encourage your patrons to tag pictures in your Flickr photostream, engaging with your collections in new ways and fostering dialog between the staff and patrons about these collections.
• Post signs in your library asking people posting photos of your library to tag them with a tag of your choosing. Consider creating an RSS feed for that tag and promoting to patrons or embedding the feed in the library's web site. NOTE: People can vandalize your feed by tagging inappropriately, so whether or not this works well for you will depend on your community and possibly monitoring the feed.

Education:

• Put screenshots in Flickr to use as embedded images in blog entries and tutorials. Flickr automatically creates different sizes of images, so this empowers staff who don't have photo-editing software but want smaller versions of screenshots to include in their teaching materials.
• Create a collection of teaching slides for different topics for staff to share in creating teaching materials and slideshows.
• Use images of library exhibits to create online versions. These can be using the images from Flickr in the web page code or creating a slideshow of the exhibit to embed as an animated display in the web page.

Marketing:

• Highlight items from rare collections.
• Show what’s on the New Book Shelf this week.
• Promote your electronic collections by posting selected public domain images to your Flickr account, then link back to the main page for that collection or title.
• Use a Flickr widget to create a dynamic feed of new images from your account to your library web page.

Partnerships & Collaborations:

• Partner with local museums or historical society in creating an image collection on a topic of shared interest or for an event.
• Partner with other libraries, staff, or educators on informal image collections to meet common goals.

Library Work:

• Communicate with off-site book repair staff about needed book repairs for specific items.
• Communicate with facilities plant managers or custodial supervisors about facilities issues, or track progress of a renovation.
• Document visual brainstorming, dialogue and concepts from staff meetings.

With Other Library Staff:

• Promote good will by documenting staff events and parties. Have a designated staff photographer, or take turns.
• Collect staff photos (but allow people to opt out for privacy)
• Collect screenshots of error screens with notes for troubleshooting with system staff, and for staff training.

Your Personal Professional Work:

• Collect pictures of best practices from other educators or librarians in your area.
• Snap pics of poster sessions at conferences. Make a photoset of your favorites to share with colleagues upon your return. *NOTE: Ask permission before posting publicly, or set viewing to friends and family only.
• Use the Flickr "Favorites" function to 'bookmark' or collect images from others as examples of good ideas or best practices.
• Explore photos of other libraries to get ideas for building and renovation projects.
• Join Flickr groups to share with other libraries, and get more ideas from what they are doing.

Cautionary Notes

While Flickr can be a very useful tool, there are a few caveats or restrictions to keep in mind. Among these are copyright and licensing, institutional factors, and Flickr's own policies.

First, licensing issues and copyright are always important to have in mind when providing information formally or informally. For images that you have taken yourself of other people and places, there is usually no problem with you providing the images, however you will want to consider what license you wish to apply — how do you want other people to use your images. Flickr supports a variety of Creative Commons licenses as well as full copyright restrictions. When you are taking pictures of collection items, copyright may apply. If you are uncertain if copyright applies you may wish to mark an image "Private" so it will not show up in the image search for Flickr.

My Flickr account began as a personal account, and then I began using it for professional purposes as well. If the account is paid for from institutional funds, managers might want to have some say over what it included and how it is presented. Even if it is a personal account, if you are incorporating job-related information you want to remember how this reflects on the reputation of the institution. If you are doing exhibits, educational fair use might apply for some of the images you use. Safest is to focus on photos you’ve taken yourself and pictures from items that are out of copyright. Last but not least, with so much digitization being done in libraries around the world, chances are that someone somewhere is digitizing any book that you would consider including. Be careful to not duplicate other workflows in your institution, but rather to use your activities in Flickr to support and promote other institutional resources and services.

Last but not least, Flickr clearly states in their online documentation that their service is intended for personal use only. I know of libraries whose photostreams were pretty obviously professional in scope and whose accounts were blocked by Flickr in the sense of being suppressed from the public image search. Since the library wanted to make the images more findable, this defeated the purpose of the account. When you create a new account in Flickr, they give it a pretty close review for the first few weeks and several images. They want to make sure you are following the guidelines. When you create a new account, to prevent this happening, try to include a mix of images or focus on photos of people and places for the first few weeks or months.

More examples of neat things libraries and librarians are doing with Flickr:

Flickr: Groups: History and Art of Dentistry: 

Flickr: RosefireRising: Collections: Dentistry:  

Flickr: RosefireRising: Collections: Work: 

MBlog: Web 2.0: 

Want more information about how to set up and use Flickr? Read "Get Flickr-tastic!" by Andrea Mercado