Thing Four - Flickr

Yo,

Now I have to admit, Flickr is something I've never really dealt with. I have had a very basic idea of what it is, but have never sought out to learn more... until now!

One of the first questions I had regarding Flickr, is why didn't they put an E in the word? Anyway, one of the first things I learned about Flickr is the ability to tag images with keywords to search for photos. This is a really smart idea, especially for people with a lot of pictures to look through.

I decided to create a free Flickr account myself just to see how easy to use it was to setup and upload any images I have. I was able to sign up with just my Yahoo ID which I've had for years, so that part was easy enough. Logging into my account, it was easy and pretty obvious as to how to upload images from either my computer or a digital camera or another device. I put about 40 pictures or so into my free Flickr account, which has a 100mb limit of photos, so I had plenty of space to spare, though for people with a digital camera that take many more then my 40 pictures, 100mb may not be enough. Here's an image from my Flickr account I setup http://www.flickr.com/photos/23383940@N03/2240480937/



This was taken right before my graduation, with my grandma. As you can see, I have an enormous head, so big that apparently they don't make graduation caps in that size, which is why it's perched on my head. Suffice to say, it's probably the least cool I could have looked. Also at the top of the blog I put a hand drawn picture of Cosmo from "Fairly Oddparents". As well as a picture of my wearing a suit standing next to my dad, in the darkest building of all time.

One thing, not related to Flickr, but about Blogger instead. Putting images in this blog, they go to the top of the post by default, with no way (that i've seen) inside of blogger to move the image to wherever your cursor is. Instead, I had to place it at top, select the image, cut and then paste it to where I wanted it. While I have no problem using this work around, there are those not as familiar computers in general that wouldn't necessarily know how to do that.

I thought that Clemens and Alcuin libraries of the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University's Flickr page was a really cool example of what you're able to do. They used a photo of a bookshelf with books on it, and each book was it's own link that you could click on to get it's link to Amazon and it's availability at the library.

This could be a great way for our Library to share photos that aren't always easy to find and view from our site. There are many events that the library is involved in, with many pictures being taken. I'm sure there people that would be interested in viewing those pictures, and having a Flickr account would be a way to share them quickly and easily.