They say in order to learn a new technology you have to give yourself permission to play. That can be hard to do when you’re swamped with deadlines and ever-growing to-do lists. Luckily, around the holidays, things sometimes slow down. Colleagues take vacation, phones stop ringing, and emails are so far and few between you begin wondering if a server is down. What a great time to experiment!
That’s just what several of us at the Nebraska Library Commission did the Friday before Christmas. By 3:00 in the afternoon it was pretty dead around our offices. Those who had places to go had already gone and the rest of you weren’t calling in or emailing us–we felt sort of like the Maytag repairman! That’s when we got out the digital camera and the Nancy Pearl librarian action figure……
If you’ve been watching the NLC Announcements page and various mailing lists, you know that the Network Services department is offering our first-ever Flickr training in January and February. As you can imagine, that means we are busily trying to familiarize ourselves with the ins and outs of the service. In addition to setting up a Nebraska Library Commission Flickr Account back in August, we’ve created and administer two Flickr groups–Nebraska Libraries, where people can post pictures of Nebraska libraries, and Pets of Nebraska Librarians.
In our explorations of Flickr we’ve discovered libraries doing lots of creative, fun, and innovative things with their Flickr accounts. We’ve also discovered Flickr groups that are providing great forums for librarians to share thoughts and ideas. On the Friday before Christmas, however, we were looking for something a bit more whimsical and distracting — and the Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure group fit the bill!
So, as I mentioned above, armed with a digital camera and a Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure, we set out to take some pictures that we could add to the group. Our goal was to use Nancy as a prop to highlight not only Nebraska Library Commission services and projects, but also to promote Nebraska in general.
In total, we posted 12 "Nancy Pearl" photos to the Library Commission Flickr account and to the Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure group. You can check out our results here. (If you do look, be sure to view the individual photo pages–we’ve added "notes" to some of the pictures!)
So what did we learn? Well, I can only speak for myself, but I got to go through the process of joining a public Flickr group. I also learned that taking photos and uploading them to Flickr is easy compared to the creative challenge of writing captions and descriptions and adding notes and tags. I also saw first hand how adding photos to a group draws traffic to your Flickr site and stimulates interaction. Soon after we added our photos to the group they were viewed multiple times, and several librarians in the group made us (the Nebraska Library Commission) a contact. Not bad for the Friday afternoon before Christmas!
P.S. If you’re interested in Flickr but won’t be able to attend one of the currently scheduled training sessions, check out our Flickr Information & Training Resources web page!
P.P.S. If your library has a Flickr account you’d like to show off, consider sharing it with your fellow Nebraska librarians via a comment to this post! We’d love to see what you’re up to!
It seems silly to have membership in the Nebraska Libraries group be members only. Usually, when I am looking around at groups, I don’t bother joining members only ones. Is there a reason?
Hmmm…. Good question. I think we probably made both the “Nebraska Libraries” and the “Pets of Nebraska Librarians” groups be “members only” because we were new to Flickr and didn’t know what cons, if any, might be associated with allowing people to join instantly.
(Note: Both groups are what are called Public, invitation only groups. According to Flickr’s “Create a new group” page, “invite-only public groups are useful for small groups who wish to focus on a particular theme, but want to maintain control over membership.” When you click on the “Join this group” link, instead of becoming an instant member you are prompted to fill out a brief form that goes to the group administrator asking to be added to the group.)
I know in the case of the “Pets” group, which I created in part to provide Nebraska librarians with a place to learn about Flickr, I was thinking some folks might feel more comfortable in a somewhat controlled environment, especially if we got any discussion going. But maybe that’s not as much of an issue with the Nebraska Libraries group.
This is definitely something we can reconsider, and probably should if the “invitation-only” component is something that discourages even Nebraska librarians from joining.
If anyone else reading these comments has some experience with Flickr groups and the pros and cons of being able to join instantly vs. having to request an invitation, it would be useful if you could share that with us.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and for giving us something to think about Karin!
I think online there’s always a temptation to close things down at first- not allow comments, make things members only etc. The biggest online problems I have seen have been from spammers, though, not malicious people – luckily I have not seen too much in the way of spam at flickr. (yet, I’m sure the spammers are working night and day to figure it out. :P)
I usually try to start with openness and then close things down if there are problems. It can be scary starting with a new technology, though, so I understand!
Just wanted to send an update. After talking about it we decided to go ahead and take the “by invitation only” restriction off these groups. Now people won’t have to wait for us to notice and respond to their “request to join.” Hopefully this will make the groups more user-friendly and welcoming!