#6,#7,#8 Flickr

I felt that I've spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what Flickr is about. I'm not a very visually oriented person. Nevertheless we live in a visually dominant culture and as a librarian it's something not to forget. Libraries tend to be focussed on texts - as is Google by the way - sometimes to the detriment of the visual. If we are looking for pictures or video we can only find them through words (tags or otherwise) used for description.
So tags are very important - more opportunities for librarians!? It is one of the special features of Flickr to stimulate the user to add tags.

If we accept the premise that the visual is very important in our contemporary culture then using Flickr to connect to our public seems to me essential.

A number (50!!) of ways we can make Flickr work in our library is linked to on the 23dingen website. Give a virtual tour, Share event photos, Share history, just to mention three are obvious really - but which libraries use Flickr in this way?
Slideshows made by public and/or personnel via Flickr can easily be shown in the library next to "normal" foto exhibitions and also on the library website of course. Slideshows of past activities and those coming up could be amazing promotion.

So what have I done with Flickr? Much more than I can show here that's for sure. First of all a mini slideshow and then a picture postcard transformation thanks to Picnik. Then a link to a mashup with the maps application. This is a very attractive way of linking pictures and places. It's a pity that you can't put your map from Flickr directly on to the blog in the same way as photos. Which is the easiest way of doing this?



Before and after Picnik



It's a shame that you can't transfer the map application directly from Flickr to a blog so I've linked it here or Hugo Wolf's Birthplace in Slovenia

And now it's only three days before the 200th birthday of Robert Schumann.