Exploration 3 - Flickr

I've always felt that one of Flickr's best qualities was the ability for people to add tags to describe their photos in natural language. It is a feature that is starting to be included in some databases and library catalogs. After all, the way LC or Dewey describes a particular material is not necessarily how a regular person would. Additionally, why should an item necessarily be limited to three descriptors? Though bibliographic control certainly has its place in libraries, the advent of tagging is a welcome addition to make searching easier and more accessible to the everyday user--and possibly more interactive (or "2.0") by allowing them to add their own tags to a libray catalog.

But back to Flickr itself. Doing a search for "librarian", I came across a group called "I am a librarian", which encouraged its members and viewers to consider the following:

"Since we don't look like librarians, what does a librarian look like?"

By posting photos of librarians both inside and outside their "natural habitat", the group seeks to break the outdated stereotypes of who we are in our profession. We are not the stuffy, reserved "shusshers" of yesteryear, but a more proactive (and increasingly younger) group of individuals looking to serve our community while providing traditional as well as innovative informational services. I really like how this group is using a 2.0 initiative like Flickr to allow people to question their traditional views of our profession.

I think Flickr could have some useful purposes in the library. For staff, it would be a great way to document and easily catagorize and maintain photos from library programs. This would be an easy way for people throughout the system to take a look at what's going on at each branch, add comments, and link pictures through common tags (such as "Summer Reading Club" or "holiday").

The Library of Congress' Flickr project fascinates me in that they are encouraging the public to contribute to the pursuit of better understanding and identifying the people and circumstances in some of the photos they have collected. I think a public library could take a similar initiative by teaming up with a local archive and encouraging its patrons to help identify people and places in old photos that have been donated over the years. Another possibility is starting a community album of patron submissions that would help document the past and present through family photographs and commentary. Other community users could contribute their own comments and notes to photos, adding to the collective memory in an organized, interactive way.