Elizabeth B. Thomsen

Archive for the ‘Photographs’ Category

Many libraries use Flickr to find photographs to add color and visual interest to their blogs and websites. It’s an incredible resource, but one that you have to use with care. You need to check images to make sure any image you want to use has a Creative Commons license, figure out the correct code to link to the photograph on Flickr, and provide credit to the photographer.

ImageCodr is a tool that makes it easy to check the license and get the correct code to link to any size of an image on Flickr, complete with a Creative Commons license and credit link. You just paste in the URL for any Flickr photopage, and get the license information, and an option to preview any available size and generate the code you need for your page. Here’s a sample of what that page looks like:
ImageCodr Sample.

The image below was added to this blog post using ImageCodr. The image will inherit borders, fonts, etc., from your site’s stylesheet, and will probably look just fine as-is. However, if there’s something you don’t like, you can adjust the stylesheet and add a class to the div that encloses the code.

The site does add a link to the ImageCodr site, at the end of the photographer’s credit line. You can find it in the example below by hovering over the the space at the end of my name. This is either a subtle or awkward way to provide a linkback to the ImageCodr site.

• ImageCodr — This is the main page
• ImageCodr: Get Code Page — This link goes directly to the page where you can paste in a Flickr photopage URL
• ImageCodr: Search — The search page makes it easy to search Flickr for images with a Creative Commons license

  by  Elizabeth Thomsen 

If you were designing a postage stamp for your library, what would it look like? What about historic buildings and other notable places within your community, wouldn’t it be fun to see them featured on postage stamps?

The United States Postal Service does allow you to put your photographs on real postage stamps through their Picture It Postage plan.

But it’s more fun and a lot cheaper just to play around with the idea of designing your own local postage stamps. There’s a free online tool called Framer that makes it easy to create stamp images from your photographs, complete with postmark. It can connect to your Flickr or Facebook account to get your pictures, or you can upload them from your computer.

This might be a fun photo-craft project for children or teens (anyone, really!) These faux stamps could be used as graphics for your library blog or website, or printed out and used as part of a display — could work with a travel display, or one on stamp collecting or perhaps on the lost art of letter-writing.

Historic images, like this one from the New York Public Library’s collection on Flickr, also work well for this. Be sure to change the date for the postmark for these!

Have fun! Framer has many other styles and options, and it’s part of a great collection called fd’s Flickr Toys.

The DC Public Library is using Flickr to run an interesting photography contest. Photographers choose any of the historic photographs from the DCPL Flickr Commons collection, take a new photograph of the same location, and upload it to the DC Then and Now group which the library set up for the contest. Participants can just upload the new picture and add a link to the old, stitch the old and new together, or remix the images in any way they want, encouraging creativity.

The new images must be given a Creative Commons license, which means that the library (or anyone else) will be able to use them within the generous conditions of the license. (There are four versions of the Creative Commons license on Flickr — all require attribution to the photographer, and differ in whether they restrict commercial use and allow for derivative works.)

Participants differ in how they interpret the idea of then-and-now pictures. Some entries are a totally different view of the building or object shown in the original picture, while others try to capture exactly the same view as the original.

My favorite photographs here are the ones by Flickr user tvol,Timothy Vollmer. In addition to adding his matching images to the group, he also adds a three-part image showing his process, and explains his process:

“These three-photo sets show the process I used in taking photographs for the DCPL Labs DC Then & Now group. The top photo is the original from the DCPL Commons set, which I loaded onto my iPhone so I’d know which perspective to shoot. The middle photo is the location of the original represented through Google Street View (also from iPhone). The final photo is the updated photograph I took, captured with a Nikon d90. “

Any library could do a contest like this with their historical images, whether those images are on Flickr, your website or an online digital archive. Using a Flickr group to collect the entries makes it easy for both the participants and the library, and it means that all images will be public and free for others to enjoy. Participants would only need to sign up for a free Flickr account to participate, and any Flickr user can start a group. This is a great way to engage the community in your local history collection!

Links

• Photo Contest: DC Then & Now — Contest announcement on the DC Labs Blog, with more information on the contest rules, deadline and prizes
• DCPL on Flickr Commons — The library’s photostream
• DC Then & Now — The Flickr group for the contest

It’s spring! Birds are singing, trees are blossoming and flowers are blooming. It’s a good time to take the camera outside and take some pictures of your library in all its spring loveliness to put on your library’s website or post on Flickr or Facebook.

Sometimes we’re so focused on taking pictures inside the library, showing our services, displays and programs, and we don’t think about stepping outside to take pictures of the library building and grounds. But these outdoor shots show the library as members or our community experience the library every day as they walk by, drive by or come for a visit. And if your photographs showcase trees and plants, be sure to identify them in your title or description — consider it preventative reference!

These seasonal pictures are nice additions to Flickr groups. Many libraries add their pictures to library groups, like Libraries and Librarians That’s great, but pictures there will mostly be seen by other librarians. Consider also posting them in regional and local groups, like Boston and Surrounding ‘Burbs or North Shore, Massachusetts. There are also groups for many individual cities and towns. Adding your library photos to these groups helps them be seen by members of your own community — just another way to remind them we’re here!

Teacher Karen Bosch has an interesting post about how her students made their own National Park Trading Cards using the online Trading Card Maker. Looks like a nice project, a good way to teach the kids to gather and organize information into a concise, defined structure. The trading card format makes it easy to use them as flash cards to study and use to test each other, and they could also look good pinned up on a map or bulletin board.

This trading card toy could also work well for library projects. Students, staff or volunteers could make trading cards with photographs of various landmarks and historic places in the community. They could go out and take photographs of each site, or they could search online on Flickr and other sites for photographs. (Be sure to respect the photographers’ copyright and only use photographs with an appropriate license.) These trading cards could be printed out, or used on websites. The trading card at the left is an example of a card using a photograph of a historic house.
[See the Full Size Trading Card | See the Photograph on Flickr]
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The New York Public Library has joined the The Commons, the special Flickr program for libraries and museums, who share their collections on Flickr and encourage members of the community to add comments and tags to help describe the images. The New York sets shared here include photographs of dance legend Ruth St. Denis, production photographs from early cinema, travel photographs from Egypt, Syria, Japan and other places, Civil War photographs, a large selection of Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York photographs from the 1930s, and more.
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