Thing 13

Thing 13
Explore Flickr, the world’s biggest image bank.

What is Flickr ?
Flickr is a photo sharing website that allows registered users to upload their pictures. Some are creative and beautiful works of art; others are, well, less so! But with around 5,000 images per minute being uploaded, through sheer mass of numbers you can find arresting and beautiful images, many of which are free for you to download, save, and reproduce with a creator attribution.

1. Go to www.flickr.com and, without entering text into the search box, click on ‘Search’:


2. From here you can search for photographers or pictures, or click on ‘Advanced Search’ which offers even more search options.

If you do a 'photos' search Flickr searches the titles of photos and also the tags that have been added to them.

Try one or more of the following searches:

• keyword 'books' or 'library' or 'archives'
  
• one of your hobbies
• a place you want to visit
• Library and Archives Canada
  

While you're there, have a look at the Ottawa photographs group, and from Idlethink, who has some lovely pictures of books in Cambridge libraries (don't let the title 'bookporn' put you off: there's no adult content!).

Libraries using Flickr
Many libraries, museums and archives have Flickr accounts through which they publicise aspects of their collections. Plymouth Libraries have been really creative in their use of Flickr to promote library events, while the National Library of Scotland has uploaded lots of images from its collections, many of which can be saved under Creative Commons (more about this in Thing 10). LAC's Flickr photos support web presentations and highlight several collections of Canadian topics. The Library of Congress even uploaded a set of 'mystery pictures' and asked Flickr users to help identify them - with amazing success!

Things to try:
Create a flickr account (if you already have one, skip to the next paragraph). Go to Flickr and click on the "Create Your Account" button. If you already have a Yahoo! ID, you can use this to sign in on the right side of the page that appears. If not, you will need to create a Yahoo! ID first, in the section below that where it says "Don't have a Yahoo! ID - Sign Up".

Once you've completed the flickr sign up process and are logged in to your account, upload some of your own photos. Start by clicking on the "Upload Photos and Videos" link on the main page. Be sure to tag each photo with some descriptive tags.
Next, visit the page for the phoon group or library signage or librarian shoes or the secret life of plants or what you like, and ask to join it by clicking on the Join? link (highlighted blue in image below)





You can revisit your group pages and click on the "Add something?" link to add some of the photos from your photostream to the Group Pool.

If you don't have any pictures to upload and would like some sample ones to work with, just drop me an email and I can send you a few to use.


Additional things:

1. Put some of your flickr photos into a set - look under the Organize & Create menu at the top of your flickr home page.

2. Change the rights settings for one of your photos by going to its page (click on the photo in your Photostream to go there) and clicking on (edit) next to its current rights settings (these are shown under Additional Information on the right side of the page).
On the page where you edit the rights settings, you will also have the option to change the default rights settings for all your photos, maybe you want to share them all under a Creative Commons licence?

Note that you should not use copyrighted material in your blog unless you have permission to do so. The cartoon at the beginning of Thing 4 comes from coxandforkum.com:

For instance, if you choose Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons, then only non-commercial entities can use your image, they must give you credit for it, and whatever they create from it must be shared in the same way. NASA has just joined the creative commons on flickr

3. "Geotag" some of your pictures to indicate where they were taken. To do this, go to the individual photo's page, then click on "Add to your map" under Additional Information on the right side of the page. To look at photos from various locations around the world, choose "Places" from the Explore menu at the top of your flickr home page.

Try Creating your own Flickr badge and add it to your blog.

Try adding an RSS feed from a photographer or photostream you like to your iGoogle page or Google Reader. Just click on the orange RSS button and choose where you’d like to receive the photostream. You can see how this looks on my iGoogle page:

Further reading:
How to make Flickr work for your library (CollegeDegrees.com)

for more flickr fun see: http://ctls23things.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/6-more-flickr-fun/