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

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

3. 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

4. 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.)

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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)

9. 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

10. 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

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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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