The library at North Caroline State University, NCSU Libraries, has put photos from its Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) on flickr for people to access and tag. I started on the NCSU Libraries homepage and navigated to the Special Collections Research Center from there. Then I looked for the link (or any other information at all) that might take me to the flickr photostream. There are prominent links under “Community” from the SCRC page to the Wolfblogs and the Wolfwikis for students, staff, and faculty, but nothing mentioning the flickr project.
I would say, unless you already knew that the flickr project was there (and even if you did), you’d never find it on the NCSU Libraries site. I think it’s too bad because I think the flickr project for the digitalized images from the SCRC fits right in with the Libraries’ blogs and wikis services. Both of these are collaborative with opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to start blogs, comment on other blogs in the NCSU community, and participate in existing (or start new) wikis. It only makes sense that there would be a flickr photostream that invites tagging and further participation.
The problem I see with the flickr photostream is that with no explanation of the project on the NCSU Libraries site or the SCRC site, and none on the flickr page itself, I’m not sure what the project purpose actually is. Is the SCRC planning to add tags to their catalog for the whole collection? Is there going to be links from the flickr images to their physical place at the Libraries in the future? Does the SCRC have plans for how researchers might use this service? I can’t seem to find any answers to these questions. I like the idea of having a flickr photostream if it’s being integrated into the library’s traditional classification scheme, to complement it in some way, but this photostream seems to just stand alone. I’m not sure what purpose it’s serving.
It was big news when the Library of Congress launched their project of putting digitized archival images on flickr for the world to tag. The LC homepage has a link on it that opens a page explaining the flickr pilot project. The page includes a link directly to the flickr photostream as well as an explanation of the purposes of the project, and and invitation for public participation. This seems to make more sense to me. I know why the images are on flickr and I understand what I’m supposed to do about it. I think I’d be more likely to tag the LC images on flickr than the ones the SCRC has up. I might browse through the SCRC ones, but I wouldn’t likely bother to tag them.
One improvement to the flickr tool at the SCRC would be to add in information page on the site that explains the nature, intentions, scope of the project. Adding a link to the flickr photostream would be helpful, as well as a brief explanation of the SCRC on flickr. I’m interested to see if the SCRC is planning to do with the flickr project, if anything.
Added note:
After writing this post, I was reading through posts on “Library 2.0″ on The Ubiquitous Librarian, the blog of Brian Scott Matthews. I stumbled across his post, “Social-enabled Library Websites? The Post-It Note Concept.” Matthews outlines his suggestion for adding more interactive options to the NCSU Libraries site:
I pitched an idea last week that didn’t meet resistance, but didn’t have a big bandwagon either. Here is the gist of the story.
[...]
Basically you take your mega forum, which works like all other message boards with threaded conversations all on one page—but then also embeds select threads or topics onto appropriate web pages. Students have questions about the equipment we rent out, here is a way they can post questions, get answers, see what others have said, etc. Or what about printing or events or workshops? Everything would be more social and at least there will be an offer of interaction.
Another example: With a recent environmental display in the library, a student used a post-it note to comment about the information on the wall. We took it down, but this type of interaction would be ideal for a message board environment because individuals could have a dialogue about the display materials and it could result in a larger community discussion.
Yeah, I know there are issues with “appropriateness” and “security” and “identity” and “moderation”—that’s all to be worked out over the summer, but I think the concept is worth a shot. Imagine a pile of post it notes neatly arranged in a digital format expressing opinions and feedback relevant to the web page they are viewing… we’ll see what happens.
I love this idea. I love that Matthews doesn’t get hung up on the technicalities of a proposal like this, but instead suggests what he would ideally like to see with the intentions of ironing out the details later. This is what I think librarians and other library staff need to be doing more of. We need to look at how we can improve the interactivity of library sites, how we can optimize services to library users. “Library 2.0″ and “Web 2.0″ applications are a big part of this.
Matthews’ approach of, look at what we need, see what’s out there to fill the need, then figure out how it can work for us, is great when looking at integrating things like tagging and social bookmarking (as well as other social software tools) into existing library platforms. I look forward to reading about how things get worked out over the summer over at the NCSU Libraries.
