This week through Common Craft I learnt more about Flickr as a photo sharing tool. As discussed in my previous post I have some experience using Flickr to search for images. However, I hadn’t realised its full potential for turning photos into a “social” medium via use of a common web space, a search engine and tagging.

I think it could be said that the use of tagging in social networking sites like these encourages people to think like librarians. Tagging is really a form of cataloguing in that it relies on creating search terms. So it can further add to the Web 2.0 philosophy of breaking down barriers between the library, its staff and its users. Tagging, then, can do much for educating people in use and creation of search terminology as well as promoting catalogue search strategies like keyword searching.

On Flickr I enjoyed looking at photos of the British Library and the State Library of Victoria which I visited recently. I can see how Flickr and other photo sharing sites might operate as a window into another’s view of the world ie. we see through someone else’s eyes by sharing their photographs online. In the first Common Crafts show it was said that Learning 2.0 spaces like Flickr and Blogspot change traditional barriers of authorship. Everyone can become an artist, journalist or photojournalist. And likewise we can all become active, not passive, spectators, provided that we have access to technologies. Hence the role of the 'audience' changes too.

To practise searching and to become more familiar with Flickr I looked up a local NSW library. I was disappointed to find no results. However, this has inspired me to take some pictures of my favourite library, add them to Flickr and share them with the world! Watch this space...