Things Four, Five, Six -- Playing With Sticks

Had lots of fun playing with the different Flickr tools and other mashups. At a certain point I just had to say STOP! Here at the library we really haven't taken advantage of these tools when it comes to creating unique and fascinating marketing and outreach materials. I can see lots of applications to catch the eye of our patrons -- whether it is a Flickr presence that alerts interested people to pictures that tell our story, or using mashups to create fun stuff on our web-page that gets resources and services noticed.

Things Four, Five, Six -- Pick Up Sticks

Fred in searches the Reference Collection
Originally uploaded by CedarLakeReflections

I had been aware of Flickr for some time, just never explored it. I have on occasion, done photo shoots in the library to create images for brochures, open houses, flyers and the web-pages. I decided for this exercise to use the pix I had taken of Flexible Fred, our anatomical skeleton mascot. He is a very willing (with a little help) model.

Creating a Flickr account (yet another set of user names and passwords) was easy, as was uploading the pictures. Adding the initial tags was also easy, requiring an analysis of each photo as to what elements of it would interest a person searching the collection (do people really look for pix of measuring sticks?). Our web page software contains an imaging module that I had played with when first introduced to it, but lacked the time to go back to. This introduction to Flickr reminds me that it is available, and should be dusted off and re-examined.

Oh, and if you want to see more pixs of Fred, the Flickr account name is CedarLakeReflections (for when I have time to upload my more "picturesque" photos) and the collection is Flexible Fred.