Flickr in Libraries

Courtesy of http://www.technologytell.com/gadgets/files/2012/01/flickr-logo-640.jpg

Flickr is a social media web and mobile application created in 2004.  It is a video and image hosting web site and service.  Users embed and share personal photographs, search for photos, and to host images for blogs and social media.  Libraries can use Flickr to post images of the items in their collections such as new books, new DVDs, new audio books, items from the display cases, items from their special collections, and much more.  According to Siân Pugh in “The National Library of Wales on Flickr Commons” in concern to the promotion of the Flickr account on Twitter they promote it “by selecting a photograph and posting a tweet, either asking a question around the theme of the photograph, or making a statement about it.  The tailored photographs make these Tweets much more relevant… NLW recently held an outreach programme… to coincide with this a set of photographs relating… was uploaded to the Commons” (p. 33).  This would help the library promote not just the collections, but also the outreach programmes that the library participates in.  The British Library has an active Flickr account with over 1 million photographs on their profile.  

 

Pugh, S. (2011). The National Library of Wales on Flickr Commons. Microform & Digitization Review, 40(1), 30-35.