I've explored photo sharing sites before as a part of my course work and to explore images posted by libraries throughout the world. One particularly interesting project carried out by the National Library of Australia is Picture Australia, which is a way for people in Australia to upload photos, both historical and current, to help the library document what is happening in Australia. Here is a link to one of their collections on Flickr of "People, Places and Events" in Australia. Picasa is another similar photo sharing site, which is owned by Google. Picasa also includes some free software that can be downloaded to edit photos as well. I think that Flickr and Picasa are great tools for libraries to share photos with their customers; however, libraries should be careful that they don't post photos of people without their express consent and especially not to post photos of children without getting the permission of their parents.
For my exploration of Flickr, I searched for Marshalltown, my hometown in Iowa to see if there were any cool pictures of the town or people in the town. I found some really great photos of the new Orpheum Theater Center, which was just recently restored and reopened with an added coffee shop and two theatres (one black box and one to show movies) and which shows old films or topically relevant films on the weekends. Recently, the center hosted the first Jean Seberg film festival, which honored one of the most famous actresses from my hometown, who starred in Jean-Luc Godard's famous film À bout de souffle (or Breathless, in English), which premiered in 1960. Here is a link to one of the photos of the center.
Have you ever used Flickr in your library or in your personal life? What ways does your library use Flickr? Have you found that sharing the photos on your library's Facebook or Twitter page has helped customers know that they're there? Have you ever encountered any privacy issues when using Flickr or other photo sharing programs?
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