or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk


Virtual Library Tour using flickr

   March 21st, 2008 Brian Herzog

Chelmsford Public Library Front DoorI've been working on this for awhile, and finally got it all together - a set of photographs on flickr that serve as a virtual tour of my library.

It is a fairly simple approach to a virtual tour, in that I just took pictures of all the different areas of our library, wrote up little descriptions of each area, and then linked them together using flickr's notes feature (I also made a floor plan of both levels and linked all the areas that way, too). It makes for almost a self-guided tour of the library, and someone who saw it recently said it was like moving through a video game or a "choose your own adventure" story.

It's a little less fancy than other tours out there, but I liked it in that all it really required was time - no special software or skills necessary (other than flickr, obviously). Also, being flickr, patrons can leave comments, and the photographs can be easily repurposed for other uses.



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Online Photo Tools

   March 13th, 2008 Brian Herzog

cameraI am giving a workshop in early April on using flickr. It's the last in a digital photography workshop series at my library, because, after people learn how to use and take nice pictures with their digital camera, the flickr workshop will show them one option for doing something with those digital pictures.

I thought I'd get a jump on preparing for it, by compiling a list of websites I'd like to mention in addition to flickr - not just online photo sharing websites, but websites that let you edit photos, sites that have free archives of photos, etc.

In the process of working on it, it occurred to me that it'd be worthwhile to post it here, too. It's a long list, but certainly not all-inclusive, so if your favorite isn't listed here, please share.

Photo Sharing:

Photo Editing:

Image Archives:

Other flickr-related Information:

Also, this list will probably change a bit closer to the workshop.



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