Fun with Flickr

This week I get to visit an old friend - Flickr!

My library started a Flickr account sometime last year. We use it for homepage decoration - seasonal shots add interest - and also to highlight what types of new stuff we've added to the collection.

If the home page is full, I just pull the widget off until there's space again.

This grinning guy is currently wishing site visitors a Happy Halloween.

Reading through this week's lesson, I realized I've never identified our photos using the tag "sdlibraries". That was my first task.

To add a tag to all images (or as many as I wanted) I used the Organize function in my account. It allows mass photo editing, mapping, adding to sets, groups, etc. Definitely nifty.

Then I set about exploring.

Things I discovered:

• The blog-it-from-Flickr feature: I absolutely LOVE this. Can't believe I never noticed that button there before.
• People like Carnegie Libraries - there are a ton of photos of them floating around. And I can see why. They just look library-esque.
• Searching tags with stucktogether words can be useful. Flickr has not always allowed tag phrases with spaces, so searching for "librarydisplays" brings up lots of results. And gave me lots of display ideas :)
• The tag "books" - people use it for some interesting items....
• I need to visit this bookstore!
  

Flickr Widgets - the lesson doesn't mention them (maybe it's in Lesson 4b?), but you can build a Flickr Badge for your library homepage (or wherever) really easily. Once the widget code is installed, it self-updates with your new Flickr content. So, if you don't have access to edit your pages yourself, just tell your web-designer where you'd like one stuck, and Flickr will take care of the code for them and updates for you.

Can't wait to see what's coming up next!