Task 4: Image Sharing - Discover Flickr

There are other photo sharing web sites around but flickr is the most popular and successful. flickr employs all the features expected in a web 2.0 site - user generated content, sharing, tagging, commenting - putting the network into social networking by allowing communities to develop online based on common interests.

Coffee bubble self-portrait Uploaded on November 3, 2007 by tsallam

For this task you will take a good look around flickr and see what the site has to offer. See how tags work (more on tags in later tasks), what groups are, how geotagging works and all the other interesting things people are doing with flickr.

First...
Head over to flickr and take the Tour.

Then...
Explore flickr and find a photo that interests you. You can look for photos by date or place. You can look at photos taken by different cameras (have you got a digital camera? What have others taken with your model? The Library has a Panasonic DMC-FZ8). You can search for photos by keyword or tag.

Spend some time exploring the network associated with this photo. What else is tagged with the same keyword? Does the photo belong to any groups? Is the photo attracting lots of comments?

Next...
Add a post to your blog explaining what you find interesting about the photo. Don't forget to include the photo in the blog post. You can use *Blogger's photo upload tool or if your game to sign up for an account you can use Flickr's blogging tool to add images in your posts.

Finally...
Have a look around at what other libraries are doing with flickr. Start with this list or search for libraries of your choice. Also, have a look at what The National Library is doing with its flickr Project. Consider ways in which libraries could make use of flickr and include your thoughts on your blog. Just remember to update the tracking log when you are done.

Extension...

1. Although this is not compulsory, if you're up for an easy challenge sign up for a free flickr account. It doesn't take long and you have access to a few extra features like the blog this! button. If you have a digital camera even better. Take a few photos and upload them to flickr.Tag the photos with SSLlearning2 and we can display all the photos from the project in one place.
2. Flickr has an open Application Programming Interface (API for short). This means that anyone can write their own program to present public Flickr data (like photos, tags, profiles or groups) in new and different ways. Check out some of the ways some clever people are using flickr data.
   

*Hint: Getting the URL to paste in to Blogger's photo upload tool.
Important: If your on a public/TAC PC you need to use Mozilla Firefox as your browser to get right-clicks to work. OK, you need to copy the URL of the actual photo rather than the flickr photo page URL. To do this click on the All Sizes button above the photo (most photos have this). Select the small or medium size (about 300-400 pixels wide) and right-click on the download link to copy the URL. Then paste the URL in to the Blogger photo uploader. If your photo doesn't have the All Sizes button then the photo owner has restricted its use and you need to look for another photo - but don't give up!