#4: Explore Flickr

Hot Reads for Cold Nights
Originally uploaded by Book-Woman

Here's the first photo in my 'Hot Reads for Cold Nights' set (linked to the blog from Flickr).

Woo Hoo! I didn't have to create another account for Flickr, since we had already created a yahoo account for the avatar assignment. My compliments to whoever is setting up these assignments. It's really nice when things are streamlined like that for us. It's hard to find time in a busy day to play around with new Things, so I appreciated having that part done already.

I chose #2 - the fun option - taking some digital pictures in my library and uploading them to a flickr account. Since I'm 'in charge' of the 'Hot Reads for Cold Nights' program for our library system this year, I decided to take some pictures of the displays and publicity we're using to promote the program. Also, we have a local author, David Housewright, coming to our branch on February 23rd, so I thought that would be good to try to highlight.

I uploaded 20 pictures and created two sets. One set is all my Anoka County library pictures, and the other set is library pictures that are related to the Hot Reads program. The first set seems redundant at this point, since it's really all my pictures. But when I add more pictures in the future, I think it will make sense to have the library pictures as a distinct set. I think another advantage to putting photos in sets, is that you can control the order of your pictures. It seems to me that when you can choose the flow of your pictures, you can tell more of a story.

I was able to find the option to name my flickr web address and even got to use my blog name, which makes things a lot easier to keep track of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/book-woman/

I added detail to the Hot Reads set of pictures, in an effort to explain the program. But realistically, I think there are more straightforward and effective ways to publicize events. I can see using flickr to safely store photos and it seems ideal for sharing pictures. I really like being able to keep up with family and friends' vacation and baby pictures at my convenience. I'm not really sure how useful flickr would be in my daily work, but I do understand it a lot better now.

I searched the groups for Library and spent WAY too much time looking at pictures from these groups: Show us Your Library 2.0, Second Life Library, Library Artworks, Libraries and Librarians, Library....(the humorous side to library work). Whenever I go to a new city, I like to check out the local library, and this kind of felt like that, but without ever having to leave home.