What do I think of Flickr? Well, I think it’s a fun way to share photos, one of the many ways to share them that exist. Photo albums, blogs, snapfish and the like, flickr is a user-friendly new take on those. I really did enjoy looking through the LOC color photos of the 1930s, but you can see those on the LOC prints & photographs site. I guess the real value is in the sharing aspect of flickr. It makes images like those much more accessible to the general public (as does much of the internet). The drawback to that is, of course, that your photos are accessible to the general public. I know of more than a few instances where an individual’s photos posted to flickr were used by media companies without notification, attribution, or payment. Blogger Tracey Gaughran-Perez of sweetney.com saw a photo of her pug, Truman, appear on the Fox football broadcast read more here, and blogger Jim from sweet juniper found his photo of his daughter on Babble’s website backstory here. All of these images were copyrighted, and both companies blamed an intern who “made a mistake”. Tagging in Flickr makes it very easy for people to find images, both people you would want to find your photo and people you wouldn’t. Not that I’m trying to be all doom and gloom here (after all, I post my son’s photos to my personal website), but it’s something to keep in mind.
So, how could a library use Flickr? The most obvious is to post photos of library events, perhaps as part of a publicity blog. We have a programming blog, but the reasons that blog isn’t open to the public are the same reasons that a library Flickr account would be difficult. The LoC’s photo posting to get more info and tags is an innovative use, and a good one for a photo sharing site. They’ll have to sort through the tags, of course, and I’m curious to see if they get any new data on the photos or if they tend to be “gee whiz” sorts of comments.
Shshhing Exercises 