Historical Photos on Flickr
One part of the presentation I did for my recent job interview was about how libraries and other institutions are using Flickr to attract attention to their photo archives. The Library of Congress has been doing this for a while and now, via Xeni at Boingboing, news that George Eastman’s House has put over 200 historical pictures on Flickr, including several handcolored autochromes.
I should have the text of my presentation and the slides ready to go in another day or two.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:49 pm
It is truly annoying that more institutions don’t use the Internet to sell themselves to the public. People have no idea what is in museums and libraries, so they don’t go in.
I wasted so much time during the day doing research and being forced to call people to find out if they had certain materials. Just a searchable card catalog and the location and hours would have been a lot of help.
I hate not having a decent technical book store in the area. I end up having to guess that a book contains what I need from a blurb on Amazon, rather than actually looking at it and finding out.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
We’re working on it. At least, some of us are. The people at Pacific University seem receptive to some of my ideas, like using Flickr and tags in the library catalog. One of the problems is that libraries are often late adopters. Unless a new piece of tech does exactly what we want, some librarians just don’t see how it’s useful. Trying to convince them that we can hack, adapt or customize tech to work for us is still a new concept. I mean, it’s only been around a few decades!