Things 9 and 10 - Flickr and the Flickr Creative Commons

Exploring Flickr for the 23 Things programme jogged my memory and reminded me that I already had a Flickr account, created in a previous lifetime when Flickr was all the rage and the best thing since sliced bread. I never used it that much myself, being once again more of a consumer of information and content than a producer of one, but my keen photographer of a husband for one uses it all the time: we both belong(ed) to several social groups (see right for the altercation between Hermia and Helena in Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night's Dream with our am dram group - and below for a photo of Victoria Falls from helicopter during our Southern Africa trip in 2006),

and are aware that some people use Facebook for sharing photos, some Flickr, some both. From a social point of view, it's a great way of sharing memories and browsing through beautiful arty pictures. My better half even managed to get one of his photos, Lone Ant (below - there really is an ant, see if you can spot it!), included in an art photography book - the editors found his photo on Flickr, contacted him to ask for permission to use this particular shot, and hey presto! Although to this day we don't know if the book ever got published, but that's a different story altogether...







Now, looking at Flickr with my professional glasses on was an interesting process. In all honesty, at first I simply skim-read the instructions and was not entirely convinced by some of Librarian in Black's examples quoted in favour of using Flickr for promoting our libraries and our services: it seems to me that to promote our services to our own, existing readers, a library website with photos would do just the trick, or a Facebook page, or even a library blog come to think of it; simply putting photos of our library up on Flickr just for the sake of doing it or for promoting ourselves to the wide unknown world out there seemed, well, rather pointless (sorry!!). But then again, my current thinking is limited to the academic library context and more specifically to the Cambridge set-up. I realise I would be thinking very differently were I working in a public library for example, which has certainly got me mulling over blinkers I may have that I wasn't aware of until now... help, I need more imagination and the gift to think outside the box! (Cue to read fellow participants' blogs avidly and make the most of people sharing their expertise and good ideas).

However, revisiting Flickr in more depth (after having to set up a new password for it of course, since the original one was long forgotten), reading the instructions properly and more specifically setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts for my library completely changed my views on the beast and rekindled an old flame: I came across the whole concept of Creative Commons a few months ago when told that our computer officers had various photos of the building and the library in particular available on Flickr for anyone to use, and I've certainly read up a bit about it and made good use of it now. I'm also keen to contribute some photos of our library to Flickr and will carry on using it for any future promotional material both in print and electronic formats.





I've also had a better look at the advanced search features now and ventured outside of my "Flickr comfort zone", and suddenly the proverbial lightbulb has come on. It's true, the possibilities really are endless! Another useful (re)discovery, thank you Cambridge 23 Things!