WebJunction

Advocate with Images
April 30, 2007

Use images to let the community know about the exciting activities happening at the library.  Make sure to bring your camera to work and take lots of pictures of events, activities, unique staff members, or whatever else you can think of.  Then, add them to the library website and display them on social networking sites like Flickr.  Make sure you follow your libraries guidelines regarding posting patron images to the web.  This is an effective way to advocate for programming and increase the visual presence of the library in the community.

Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application.  A simple search in April, 2007 of the tag ‘library’ brings up 330,197 photos.  A cool project to check out is the 365 Library Days Project developed by WebJunction’s own Michael Porter.  People involved are asked to post 365 images within one year.  It’s fun to see what’s happening in libraries around the nation.  Read more in this article, Get Flickr-tastic! by Andrea Mercado in which she goes into greater detail about Flickr and using it in your library.

For help with creating a perfect photo check out this example of a free online photo editing site:  Piknik.  With Picnik you can quickly edit all your online photos from one place.

WebJunction would also love to use any good shots you have taken of library related activities.  Please take a look at our ‘WebJunction Needs your Pictures' discussion forum and help us create a useable collection of photos for our site.

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