#6 Discover Flickr

Listen to this podcast:


[1:12 mins]

Photo sharing websites have been around since the 90s, but it took a small startup site called Flickr to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Over the past few years, Flickr has become the fastest growing photo sharing site on the web and is known as one of the first websites to use keyword “tags” to create associations and connections between photos and users of the site.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a good look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are, and all the neat things that people and other libraries are using Flickr for.

Discovery Resources:

• Flickr Learn More tour (6 steps)
• Mediamazine Flickr Tutorials
• Flickr: Popular tags; Interesting- Last 7 days
• Flickr Services (3rd party applications & mashups)

And check out the sites that the Library is doing:

• For Work Putting Names to Faces, this was an exhibition that was launched on Flickr and was an opportunity to allow the community to help identify photos that are in the collection
• For Play UoN Library staff's photos, sharing our photos across campuses and no hassles about whether the email will allow the file sizes.
  

Discovery Exercise:

In this discovery exercise, you have two options…

A. Take a good look around Flickr and discover an interesting image that you want to blog about. Be sure to include either a link to the image or, if you create a Flickr account, you can use Flickr's blogging tool to add the image in your post. Another option you have for including images in your post is to use Blogger's photo upload tool.

-- OR --

B. If you're up to an easy challenge ... create a Free account in Flickr and use the library's digital camera to capture a few pictures of something. Upload these to your Flickr account and tag at least one of the images “UoN” and mark it public. Then create a post in your blog about your photo and experience. Be sure to include the image in your post. Once you have a Flickr account, you have two options for doing this: through Flickr's blogging tool or using Blogger's photo upload feature.

So go ahead, explore the site and have some Flickr photo fun and if you're interested in reading a bit more check out this Wired story.

PS: Remember photo posting etiquette explained in #4 and to track your progress.

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