We've all heard the old adage: a picture's worth a thousand words. You might remember that I discussed Facebook at some length in my post for "Thing 2". I would like to mention Facebook again here, if briefly only to mention that users can share photos on the site. That site allows users to upload pictures, use certain ones as profile pictures or cover images, and share pictures (put into online albums) with friends.
However, as I noted in my post for "Thing 2", Facebook is primarily known as a social networking site, rather than a photo sharing one. But photo sharing is still an important means of communication to many of today's patrons of academic and public libraries, so I explored the idea through using some popular photo sharing websites: Flickr and Pinterest. Here are my thoughts.
Thing 5: Photo Sharing
A. Flickr
www.flickr.com
Of the types of photo sharing I wanted to explore, Flickr has been around the longest. Flickr is now owned by (Yahoo!). The site allows users to group, publish, and share pictures with various groups of people in their lives. Users of the site can share their photos with everyone, friends, family, or those who are both friends and family. So, if you had taken some pictures at a party and you wanted to put them on Flickr without worrying that your mom might see them, you could do that with Flickr by restricting that set of photos to be viewable by friends only.
In addition to being impressed by Flickr's privacy settings (that is, being able to choose which groups of people can see which sets of photos), I was impressed by two other features of the site. First, new users and visitors to the site can opt to use a tutorial that explains some of the most popular features of Flickr. I believe this feature is intended to help users or visitors to decide if the site is right for them. If it is, I believe the "Tour" of Flickr can show users how to maximize their experience.
The other thing I especially like about Flickr is that people can search the site for "Creative Commons" photos. Users of Flickr can choose to mark specific photos or sets of photos as Creative Commons indicating that these photos may be used by others regardless of copyright. Being able to find "Creative Commons" photos quickly and easily may help a library or other user to find an abundance of photos for no cost to enhance any number of projects.
B. Pinterest
www.pinterest.com
Pinterest is a website that allows users to share photos through a "pin board". The photos shared may not have been taken by the same people who post those photos to their pin boards. Pin boards are organized by the user who created them. New users choose interests and from this information, the site suggests people for the user to follow and pin boards they might enjoy. Users can also choose to upload their own pictures to the site and can include these pictures on various pin boards.
People can "repin" photos from others' pin boards onto boards of their own. The number of "repins" a photo has appears under the photo. The site also tells users how many people they are following and how many users follow them. I am a new user to the site myself, so I am still familiarizing myself with its layout and features. I will say that creating my personal account was relatively quick and easy because the site allows people to create accounts using their Facebook or Twitter login information. I also enjoyed creating pin boards and repinning others' pictures to them. I have to admit however, that I am an infrequent user of the site because I am unsure of its place in my life or the life of an academic library.
That said, I should note that some academic libraries are using Pinterest and I believe this number will continue to grow in the future. One academic library using Pinterest is Saint Mary's College in California. They have an active Pinterest page dedicated to the college library. It includes 48 distinct pin boards for topics such as "best sellers", "banned/challenged books" and even "books you pretend to read".
I must say that I was impressed with the creativity of the pin boards created by Saint Mary's. Their creativity is encouraging to me. I am not a Pinterest devotee yet, but I will keep an open mind.
~J
