Digital Collections & Flickr
November 13, 2008
Flickr is the most prominent destination on the web for images. The user experience on Flickr is unsurpassed, allowing for easy searching, downloading and manipulation of images. It seems absurd for libraries to not have their digital collections on flickr as well as within their own repositories such as ContentDM. In order for libraries to remain viable, they need to figure out ways to disseminate their materials in as many places on the web as possible, where people actually traffic. I’ve heard arguments against doing this that go something like this: “Well, we’re not actually getting any more traffic on our site.” In my opinion that’s beside the point. Our goal is to fulfill a users information need, not bring them to our websites. If they are getting the information they need, we’re doing our jobs.
Our library is currently experimenting with adding our digital collections to flickr via its api. I’ll keep the updates coming!
Zip it up and zip it out!
