Our mission this week was to experiment with a social network that we’ve never tried in the past. I enjoy photography and so I picked Flickr as my new social network.
Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) boasts that they are “almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world” and posits two goals:
1. We want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video. (http://www.flickr.com/about/)
First I uploaded a ‘buddy icon’, created a profile, and imported contacts via Facebook. I was given the option to add people as Contacts, Friends, and/or Family.
Secondly, I uploaded a few photos. I added titles, descriptions, and tags. Then I grouped the photos into ‘sets’, which is similar to a photo album on Facebook. Maybe it’s the librarian in me, but I enjoyed organizing my photos. Especially with digital photos, without a service like Flickr, its hard to share organized photos. I think people are more likely to email photos to family and friends or post a few on Facebook or Twitter; i.e. avenues that are not solely for photos. You also get to choose your privacy settings, i.e. sharing with anyone, contacts, friends, and/or family.
Then I just bumbled around seeing what else I could do. There is a feature called ‘Galleries’, which
“For whatever you find interesting, fascinating, or mind-blowing on Flickr, galleries are a way to curate up to 18 public photos or videos of your fellow members into one place. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the creativity of your fellow members in a truly unique way around a theme, an idea or just because” (http://www.flickr.com/help/galleries/)
This really reminded me of Pinterest, however, with a significantly smaller limit (18 photos/videos). I created a gallery and searched public photos for material to put in said gallery…it was about books if you are interested. If you see a photo you like you go to the actions drop-down menu and select ‘add to gallery’. You can also write a description of why you selected a particular photo for your gallery. I actually like this feature better than Pinterest because with two clicks you are redirected to the original user’s page. There you can see all the background information pertaining to the photo. Whereas on Pinterest, you often have no idea where the photo/video came from, because users don’t bother providing good metadata.
There is another feature called ‘Tags’, which shows 150 of your most popular tags in a word-cloud type display.
If you click on a tag it will take you to a page containing all the photos with that particular tag. Then you can also edit photos in a particular batch and/or change the tag entirely.
You can also see your tags alphabetically in a table format. You can also see how many photos belong to each tag. You are also given the opportunity to easily edit or delete each tag.
You can also search for multiple tags at once, by clicking search and selecting as many tags as you like.
You can also mark people who are in your photos, which is similar to tagging in Facebook. Interestingly, there is a map feature where you can show where each photo was taken. Flickr also archives every photo you upload. I was surprised that Flickr read through my computer to figure out when I first uploaded each picture onto my computer, even though it was before I started an account! Talk about invasion of privacy. It has two columns: ‘taken on’ and ‘posted to Flickr’. Posted to Flickr made sense, I had just posted 5 photos to Flickr. But taken on…I was shocked to see January and February up there. Here I’ll show you a screenshot of how detailed Flickr archives are!
You can also mark you ‘favourite’ photos by selecting the star favourite button in the toolbar atop each photo you see that isn’t your own. This feature is akin to the Facebook ‘like’ feature that allows you to support your friends’ posts. Then you can go to your favourites area and see all your favourite photos. You can also subscribe to your favourite contacts, so you will see their photos as soon as their is a new one. That to me is a bit overkill, but some prefer RSS.
Flickr and Social Networking:
While I really enjoyed learning how to use Flickr, I found the actual social aspect of it a bit anticlimactic. Even though I went through all of my ‘friends’ on Facebook, only 8 have Flickr accounts. Out of those, the latest activity on Flickr was 9 months ago! Additionally, two of the eight didn’t have any public photos up for me to see. So it seems Flickr may have past its heyday!
However, I imagine I would like this social networking because it is so specialized, or I would like to think so. I’ll keep with it and see it is actually any fun!
Libraries and the Larger Conversation Online:
This week we were also asked to comment on “how can libraries effectively hold their place in the larger conversation that we’re having with each other online”
I guess for me personally, I use Facebook the most. On there I “like” a few libraries that are or were important to me. For instance, I ‘like’ the Graduate Resource Centre at UWO since I am a student and use this library’s resources. It is excellent for keeping me up-to-date on library closures, new materials, upcoming talks etc. I love that I don’t have to go ALL the WAY to their website for this information. The GRC knows its clientele well. Students are usually already on Facebook, and if the GRC updates aren’t on Facebook, students might not receive the updates at all! Of course that is a generalization, but I know for me it is very useful, since I don’t physically go to the campus and can’t easily keep track of the GRC updates.
The “conversation” is mainly about services, to which patrons either applaud or complain about said services. The libraries tend to shy away from talking about current issues, etc. That is they provide the information but don’t discuss the information itself. The same goes for patrons. I have yet to see patrons discuss current issues or materials they got from the library.
It would be interesting to see libraries begin to use social media to discuss and add to the discourse on various subjects, as applicable to the particular library. Engaging with the library patrons in this way could lead to a fruitful dialogue, that helps spread knowledge, awareness, as well as promote the library.
jamiens 