It's Not Just for Squirrels Building and Sharing a Digital Image Collection With flickr The Payoff flickr allows for easy sharing and use with social media. Image metadata (tags) is pushed to Google quickly. You can geo-tag pictures as well! You can connect with other users (including students and alumni) to build a community of interested photographers. Groups allow you to pull together like images from different users. The Problem We need an easy way to host personal or departmental images and make them easily found and shared. Opportunity flickr is a great image sharing service used my many University of Michigan departments already and can easily be used by you and your department. Process Create a free account with Yahoo! Load pictures (any size or format – including video) Share with social Media services (Pinterest, twitter, facebook, etc.) or embed into webpages. Keep backups of your images – commercial solutions can go away! Campus Examples Current flickr accounts at Michigan: Engineering UM Library UM Ford School UM Dearborn Lessons Learned Don’t skimp on tags – more terms the better. Conversely – no tags=hidden. Add descriptions with links to drive traffic to your website. Keep backups – no commercial solution is foolproof or permanent. Adding Image Details Be descriptive! Use tags for findability. Tags are basic search terms to help people track down the images. Tags may be for basic search terms (like “students” or “MBA Students”) or coded for grouping purposes (“Squirrel04072016”). Use albums for programs and events. Results While there are many options for storing your graphic images, flickr does a great job of making images found and used. Images may be organized and arranged in just about anyway you need and desire. More information See Corey’s RLC 2016 Presentation & UM Handout: tinyurl.com/csflickr2016 Corey’s flickr page: flickr.com/cseeman Contact: Corey Seeman (Kresge Library Services, Ross School of Business) cseeman@umich.edu Chris Seeman (LSA – Statistics – ‘17) seemanch@umich.edu 2016 U-M StaffWorks Best Practices and Technology Conference