Test Drive #2: Online Photo Sharing

There are a number of photo sharing communities online. These include Photobucket, Smugmug, Snapfish and Kodak EasyShare Gallery to name a few. In this lesson we will focus on the one which is perhaps the best known, Flickr.

Watch
Online photosharing in plain English from Commoncraft to get an introduction to how it all works.




Flickr is a website that allows users to view and download pictures. Signing up to Flickr allows you to upload digital pictures from your computer and share them with just friends or the whole entire planet. As a member you can “tag” an image with key words that describe the picture. This allows users to search Flickr for pictures that interest them by entering tag words into the search window.

Go to Flickr. Type “Mosman Library” into the search box at the top of the screen and take a look at the pictures that have been tagged with Mosman Library. Search for your community. What do you think about what you find?

You have looked for some work stuff; now let’s look for fun stuff. Try looking for ‘vegemite’ (click view as slideshow), ‘lamington’, ‘bad library signs’, – you get the idea, try some of your own key words (tags).

So how are libraries using photosharing?
• The National Library of Australia is using Flickr as a way of engaging people around the country in building the collection – see Our town as an example - scroll down to read the tagging guidelines. Look at the advanced search option of Picture Australia you can search for Flickr images here.
• The Library of Congress has also contributed photos to Flickr and are using the site as a way of identifying more information in their photos. See also The Commons below.
• Burbank Library put the winners of their photo competition on Flickr.

Flickr Groups
Flickr makes use of groups. Groups are communities of like minded photo posters. And, yes, there are quite a few groups with a library theme. Take a look at their FAQ page on groups for more information on how they work.

The Commons
The Commons started as a pilot project between Flickr and the Library of Congress. Its objectives are to increase access to publicly held photo collections and to enable the general public to contribute information and knowledge through tagging and commenting on images. All images must have no known copyright restrictions.

The State Library of Queensland contributes images to The Commons. Under each photo is a link for Comments. Go to the photo about Peter Finch and Diane Cilento. See how someone has added a comment about Diane Cilento. You can also see to the right, the list of tags, as well as the link “No known copyright restrictions”. Clicking on this will give you SLQ’s copyright statement. Clicking on [?] will give you the copyright requirements to contribute to The Commons.
Two other institutions you might like to look at are the National Maritime Museum and the Smithsonian Institute.

Creative Commons
How would you feel if someone took your photo and made a poster out of it and sold it? Not too happy I would guess, and rightfully so. To help protect the artist’s rights, Creative Commons was developed to provide artists with the ability to put work out into cyber space but still have control of how their work is consumed by the public. Here is more info about Creative Commons.

Examples of websites that use Creative Commons to protect and share their work:
Public Library of Science – scroll to the very bottom of the page and click the "Creative Commons Attribution License" link to see how they use Creative Commons.

The original version of Learning 2.0 was created by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. They licensed the course so that other libraries could use it. By agreeing to their licence terms in Creative Commons, we also agree to allow others to use the content of this course. We also have permission to build on the work of The State Library of New South Wales, Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, King County Library System, Orange County Library Service and Minnesota’s seven multicounty multitype library systems. You can see our licence at the bottom of this page.

Etiquette
A quick word about photo posting etiquette. When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person's permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren't taken by you unless you have the photographer's consent and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.

Explore
Have a good look around Flickr and discover an interesting image that you want to write about in your blog. Be sure to include either a link to the image or a copy of the image itself in your blog posting. For the latter, you can either use Blogger's photo upload tool or Flickr's blogging tool (you'll need to set up a Flickr account for this).

Adventure (optional)
Take some digital pictures of your libraries (perhaps a view of the front facade?). Create a Flickr account and upload your photos. Tag them with "slql2td09" and share. Make sure the pictures are public, or we won’t be able to see them. Please respect the privacy of your community members - no pictures of kids or adult faces.

If you need a bit of extra help here is a video tutorial about Flickr.

Next Test Drive ... Wikis.....