Week 7 Photos and Images

I had created an account in Flickr several years ago, but was never sure what to do with it. The additional readings gave me some good ideas for the future.

For this week's assignment, I searched the Flickr archive for pictures from my hometown. I found an interesting assortment, but chose one of the park near my home. http://www.flickr.com/photos/junie_moon_photoshare/2967825484/ The range of tags that one can assign are more informal that library subject headings. The photographers select the tags and images based on whatever topics appeal to them. As a searcher, the casualness of the phrases makes searching for images a little more complex. Photographs of empty mills in my town had the phrase "run down" used as a tag, not a standard term. Some of the photographers added notes about how the picture was composed, techniques used to "tweak" the images, and who the subjects of the pictures were. I think that I have only seen a tiny bit of the vastness of Flickr and just touched on the uses that this site offers.

I decided to add some images to my Flickr account to practice uploading and tagging. I work for a high school library and do not want to put student photos on this site. I am active in the local historical society, so I took pictures of the building. I added some picture of our different activities. We don't have a web site yet, but this will be good experience in working with images.

I uploaded 10 photographs on the Vernon Historical Society building and Myrtle's garden. I assigned tags. After I saved everything, I went to search for them on Everybody's Uploads, but couldn't find them. I found a statement that said that the uploading process to the whole Flickr archive will take several days if the account is new. I haven't used it in quite a while so that may be why. I will check back in a few days. Tags to search for vernon historical society and myrtle's garden.

I enjoyed playing with Lunapic and Picnik. Amazing effects! Public libraries could use these mashups to spice up their webpages or add dazzle to any RSS feeds. Like any new application, it has to become part of the routine for it to be used a lot.