Picknicking with Flickr

This was not entirely unfamiliar territory. I have visited Flickr on a number of occasions to view other people's photos, and to search for Creative Commons licensed images for this blog. This is the first time I have uploaded any of my own photos, however, since I usually share them via Facebook. It is also my first time on Picknik.

Setting up a Flickr account took a little longer than I'd have liked, simply because I didn't have a Yahoo account and it always takes a while to think of suitable usernames and check out the privacy settings. Uploading the photos was easy, as was adding descriptions, titles and tags. I created a set of photos under the title 'Aberystwyth' and geotagged them so that their location is marked on the map.

Picknik was equally straightforward to use and it was fun to experiment with the different effects and stickers. In addition to creating special effects, it looks as though Picknik could help to improve the quality of my photos by correcting red eye and other imperfections, which is useful to know, particularly since it is a free resource.

There are many fantastic library-related photos that have been posted in the Oxford 23 Things group. Flickr could certainly be useful if a library wanted to have an easy (and free!) way of storing their images online. As Liz points out, in addition to thinking about how the images might be used, it is also important to consider how they are stored. Care would have to be taken over the licenses, and even then there is no guarantee that they would be adhered to. That said, it is possible to limit who can view the photos by adjusting the privacy settings. As for Picknik, a few 'edited' images could probably be used to liven-up user-education materials and library blog posts, but it is probably best used sparingly ...