Flickr

Flickr is an online tool for storing, presenting and sharing digital photographs or digital images. It’s a place where you can upload your own pictures, organize them, tag them, and then choose to make them completely public, completely private, or restrict them to a select group of colleagues.

Since Flickr is owned by Yahoo, you need to set-up a Yahoo account to use it, but it’s completely free.

You can organize your photos into sets. Our Book Conservation set gives you a virtual tour of the Watson Library Book Conservation lab. Let’s look at this particular image (Book Conservation at a Glance).

Because I’m logged in, I can change the title of this photo, add a description, as well as notes within the image to highlight details. I can also add tags to the image. This information can then be searched by those who are allowed to view this photograph.

Here’s a great example of the use of the notes tool to highlight details within an image: http://flickr.com/photos/timothysschenck/70716448/. In this photograph notes have been used to label the ruins in the Roman Forum.

Take a look at the tags for this photograph. Notice that there isn’t a
link for me to add a tag. That’s because you can only tag photographs if the author allows you to. I can however, add a comment, as have several others. Thus, you can control how people interact with your photos in Flickr: you get to choose who, if anyone, can see it, who can make comments, who can add notes, and who can add tags. As with other Web 2.0 tools, contrary to popular opinion, there is a healthy degree of control you can have over your content and what people do with it.

Another thing you can do in Flickr is place your photo on a map to indicate where the photo was taken. This is called geo-mapping. Here’s another photo of the Roman Forum. If you click on the map link, you’ll see the mapping of this photograph. (Choose Hybrid view). You’ll also see other photos taken in the surrounding area posted by others.

Another thing to consider about Flickr is that it can be a good source of images. You can often find images in Flickr that you would not be able to find using a Google Image search. Searching by location, for instance, is a great way to find images of architecture in a certain place.

Sample Search:To find images of Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp you can enter the terms “le Corbusier” Ronchamp in the search box on the top right. Selecting a photograph from my list of results, I can click on the Rights information to see the permissions, and then proceed to download it if appropriate.

Here are a few examples of how Flickr has been used by Museums:
- This is a list of all the Museum groups in Flickr.
- The Brooklyn Museum has been very active in Flickr. Here are their sets of photos.
  - They’ve used Flickr to document museum events, like exhibition openings.
  - They’ve used Flickr to document the progress of ongoing museum projects like the Mut Expedition archaeological work at the Temple Precinct of the Goddess Mut at South Karnak. Looking at the Mut Precinct: Temple A set, you can see that they’ve really taken advantage of Flickr functionality in presenting their photographs. E.G. the Temple A-Front 1976 photo has notes labeling parts of the site, a description with links to further information, tags, and provides viewers with an opportunity to comment.
  - They’ve used Flickr to reach out to their audience by forming the Brooklyn Museum Group. This group gives their visitors a space to share their Museum experience by posting photos of their trip to the Museum as well as comments on the discussion board.

Web 2.0