Using Flickr at the Archives of Independence Seaport Museum

Using flickr at the Archives of Independence Seaport Museum Feb 25, 2009 DVAG Meeting Matt Herbison herbison@gmail.com www.phillyseaport.org/library

What is Flickr and what's it look like? Who has used photo sharing websites: personal / work ? Very quick look at Flickr.com - link

How we began using Flickr Online companion exhibit for small gallery exhibit outside Library - November 2006 "Ladies Who Launch: Historical Ship Christening Photos..." 1st motivation: no-tech-needed way to allow feedback People will stumble upon the photos (and redirect or not) Tags give more freedom than subject headings Online exhibit - phillyseaport.org/LWL Flickr version - photo set - comments note tags, sets, pools, groups

Outcomes from using Flickr Photos more discoverable: more use of all kinds Has driven traffic to library/museum website flickr.com more popular than phillyseaport.org - stumble-upon Via Flickr, 200+ visitors to museum website These visitors view more webpages than average visitor These visitors stay on the site longer than avg visitor ~250 ISM website visitors followed a "discuss" link to Flickr Flickr usage statistics - recent new feature Better search engine ranking Seaport Museum <> Flickr feedback cycle goog "ship christening"- link - note Wikipedia, ISM, Flickr hits Other Museum photos posted (PR, Curatorial, Education, etc.)

Successes and Failures Successes Can get material out there with no technical development and upkeep Increased exposure and discoverability of resources Eat our dust LOC, et al. Failures System is in place, but no program in place to continually add material Hoped to set up a "Launching photos" group to collaborate with other institutions with big collections of such photos Haven't fully exploited the community aspects of Flickr ...so we're not realizing the full potential of Web2.0

Concerns with using Flickr Flickr-specific concerns Comfort with openness: comments, notes, tags of others In Flickr, you have control over User Generated Content: (1) Comments; (2) Notes and tags; (3) Deleting We haven't used Flickr for non-photographic materials Ephemera exhibit - link General concerns with any online material (esp. photos) Support from the higher-ups Image resolution Copyright Whether to present photos as objects or images

Implications of Flickr for Archives? If your photos are on Flickr, more people will see them (Over 23 million member accounts and 3 billion photos) If your photos are on Flickr, you don't need IT staff (for this) Digital content management setup + yearly fees: $_?_,000 Flickr Pro account: $25/yr "Machine tags" - holds potential for better metadata control and "Flickr as database" model (see Jeremy McWilliams's June 2008 Code4Lib Journal article - http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/74) PROOF: Lots of archival photos on Flickr, from individuals and institutions of all sizes...Flickr Commons

Flickr Commons - Started January 2008 BIG institutions sharing images on Flickr Library of Congress (1st) Smithsonian New York Public Library George Eastman House Brooklyn Museum Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands flickr.com/commons "*Any Flickr member is able to add tags or comment on these collections. If you're a dork about it, shame on you. This is for the good of humanity, dude!!" (again, reinforces the need to have the appropriate "institutional comfort level" with what comes with Web2.0)

LOC on Flickr - Maintenance & Staff Time "A number of LOC staff share responsibility for monitoring all new comments, notes, and tags. They use the Flickrj app to pull all the new UGC at once. It takes about 2 hours a week to moderate comments/notes/tags for spam and inappropriateness. Sometimes users call attention to these things before staff find them. There are very few problems with inappropriate tags or comments; the Flickr community is quite well-behaved. LOC staff don’t correct spelling or syntax or remove seemingly useless tags. Staff do accept group invitations from public group administrators, but they only join public, nudity/vulgarity-free groups, so monitoring the group invites also takes time." Molly Kleinman's DLF Forum / LOC Flickr post (13nov2008) - link

Flickr Commons - 2008 Flickr Layoffs "Dedicated Flickr users act like amateur historians in The Commons, tagging, researching and analyzing the worlds' visual heritage. Thus, 67,176 tags were added by 2,518 unique Flickr users, and info on more than 500 photos has been verified by the Library of Congress and moved into the library's permanent records." http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/with-layoffs-wh.html

Extra non-presentation stuff... (other Seaport Museum Archives Web2.0 activites)

The Process of Processing - (Faux) blogging Courtney Smerz did a processing diary/blog for Seamen's Church Institute grant project - www.phillyseaport. org/processing Short overview of what archival processing entails Shows project progress Looks good to/for funders Designed not as normal blog, but imitative of blog style We've used it for prospective donors Awesome

Other Web 2.0 Wikipedia entries Drive lots of traffic to your site ~2,500 incoming to Seaport Museum site from Wikipedia 92% of them are new visitors to Seaport Museum site Be responsible about contributing to the Wikipedia community in return for placing links on their pages pointing to your website see our link at the bottom of Wikipedia entry for "Ship naming and launching" - link

Image hosting Aerial photo project - crowdsourcing difficult but fun tasks Flickr People stumble upon #1 image service? (Facebook?) Panoramio geo-specific Prob use for aerial photo project Photobucket heavily used allows hotlinking

Using Flickr at the Archives of Independence Seaport Museum

by mherbison on Jul 10, 2010

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Using Flickr at the Archives of Independence Seaport Museum — Presentation Transcript