Images/Photos

From IPL Wiki

Contents 1 About Image Sharing 2 How does Flickr work? 3 Best Practices 4 IPL examples 5 Hands on Activities 6 Articles about Flickr and Other Photo Sharing SItes 7 Feedback and Prize Drawing

About Image Sharing

With the advent of the digital age and the seemingly ever-lowering cost of purchasing computers, cameras, cell phones, and mp3 players that double as image capturing devices, it is no wonder that there has been an explosion in the use of online image and photo sites, to not only store, organize, and share images, but also to tag, mashup, and create new and unique applications for digital image content.

Best known among the online photo storage sites is Flickr, which touts four reasons why they are going to be important to you should you sign up for a free account: Share & Stay in Touch; Upload & Organize; Make Stuff; and Explore.

The popularity of sharing one's photographs online with a universe of strangers may seem uncomfortable to some, but not so with the social networking generation that is eager to blog, text message, facebook, and myspace their lives by having an online presence that is open and free.

Flickr is owned by Yahoo! and if you are a Yahoo! member, you can use that ID to join. While it is difficult to describe something as ubiquitous as online image and photo sharing sites, if you have never used them you might give them a try. One of the great advantages with storing images online is that they are now available online should you need them for any online purpose—blogging, email, posting to forums, creating products with your images or designs, avatar creation, selling things on eBay, or any of a whole host of purposes.

There are hundreds of third-party applications that have been developed to augment and enhance your Flickr experience in extremely creative ways. Phil Bradley's Website hosts a large list of these inventive additions to your Flickr fun. Quick Online Tips also offers a large list of third-party Flickr applications.

There are dozens of web sites that offer free image storage and social networking, and they are detailed on Go2Web20.net.

Here are a few alternatives to Flickr:

TweetPhoto.com. "Photosharing made simple."

Face.com. "Face recognition for the masses."

Photoshow.com. "Make a Photoshow."

Zoto.com. "Safely store & share your photos online."

Youtego.com. "Visual Tool for Self-visualization."

How does Flickr work?

After you open up your free account, which limits the number of images (.jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .tiff, .png) you can add to your collection at 200, you can upload your digital images in a number of ways:

• via the Flickr Uploadr (available for both PC and Mac)
• via iPhoto, Aperture, or Windows XP plugins
• via their upload web page
• via email
• via various free third-party desktop programs

You can use Flickr to edit your images—eliminating red eye, crop your photos, or add effects and play with adjustments. You can use Flickr to organize your images—using collections, sets, and tags. You can use Flickr to share where you are when the images were taken by using Maps, and see photos and videos taken near you. You can use the Flickr interface to keep in touch with family and friends through the Flickr contact feature, leaving comments and notes, and build a group of "friends" of your choosing.

There are many tutorials on how to use Flickr, for instance MediaMazine, Steve Campion's "Learn More" series at his Library blog, and suggestions on how to use Flickr in your library.

For Flickr newbies, you can visit How to Get the Most Out of Flickr

Flickr belongs to the Creative Commons and a user can choose to offer their creations under this license. You can additionally browse or search Flickr under each type of license as seen on the Creative Commons section on Flickr.

Best Practices

List of libraries using Flickr

Some individual library Flickr collections:

Stony Brook University Health Services Library

Smithsonian Libraries

National Library of Scotland

ALA

IPL examples

IPL on Flickr

Hands on Activities

1. Set up a Flickr account:

a. Open up a Flickraccount for free.
b. Take the Flickr Tour.
c. Upload some digital images from your camera, computer, or cell phone.
d. Add titles and/or captions to the images, add tags to the images that will help you and others find them, and set your permissions so that your friends and family can see them.
e. Invite your friends to see your collection, and ask them to comment on your photos.
f. Invite the people who are in your photos to see themselves online.
g. Search Flickr for images that match your tags.
h. Play around with the site and browse the Most Popular Tags for the Past 7 Days.


2. Use a third-party application to have some Flickr fun:

a. Try Flickr Montager to create a interesting aggregations of your images.
b. Type in words and get Flickr photographs of the letters back to Spell with Flickr.
c. Search Flickr by color with Color Fields.
d. Embed Flickr slideshows into your blog or web page with Flickr Slidr.

Articles about Flickr and Other Photo Sharing SItes

Cox, A.M., Clough, P.D., and Marlow, J. (2008). Flickr: a first look at user behavior in the context of photography as serious leisure. Information Research, 13(1). Retrieved from http://InformationR.net/ir/13-1/paper336.html

Flickr for academic libraries. (2006). Library 2.0: An academic's perspective. Retrieved from http://liblogs.albany.edu/library20/2006/10/flickr_for_academic_libraries.html

Hadro, J.. (2009). The Library of Congress Talks Digital Initiative. Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6677273.html?

JakesOnline--Flickr Sites. (2007). Retrieved from http://www.jakesonline.org/flickrsites.htm

Lerman, K., Jones, L. (2006). Social Browsing on Flickr. arXiv.org. Retrieved from http://arXiv.org/abs/cs/0612047v1

Mislove, A. et. al. Growth of the flickr social network. (2008). Retrieved from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1397735.1397742

Porter, M. (2008). List of Libraries using Flickr. Retrieved from http://www.webjunction.org/768/-/resources/discussion/25751472

Rethlefsen, M. (2009). Power Tweeting: Next Steps. Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6700358.html?

Thing #5 Flickr. (2008). School Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/290000629/post/890031089.html?

7 Things You Should Know About Flickr. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutFlick/162592

Why Flickr? (2008). University of California, San Francisco. Retrieved from http://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/flickr/why

Feedback and Prize Drawing

To give feedback to the IPL about the 15 Things and to register for the prize drawing, please visit: http://vll.ipl.org/15things/index.html

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