About the Library

The library is on the campus of a small, residential women’s college.  The college is coed at the graduate level, and also offers online and continuing education programs.  The library serves undergraduate, graduate, continuing ed. and online patrons.  The library also welcomes members of the community and alumni.  The library would like to make the materials in the archives available (in a closed stacks format) to researchers and those interested in the ephemera.  The staff of the library is small, with four full time staff, four part time staff, and several work-study employees. 

Proposal: Flickr/Wiki

Purpose of the Project

  The purpose of the project is to increase awareness of and access to the archives of the college.  The first step in this project will be the addition of a web page linked to the library’s home page.  On this page will appear information about the archives, access policies, etc.  Two major components of the page will be links to 1.) a Flickr account where a selection of unidentified college photographs will be located and 2.) a wiki which will contain an electronic version of the finding aid for the archives.

The Technology

1.) There are hundreds of unidentified photographs stored in boxes–decades worth of pictorial history of the college are going undocumented.  The collection could stay in the archives waiting for an interested party to request looking at photographs in general.  However, the majority of requests for information from the archives are about specific people.  With the photographs unidentified we have no way of helping potential researchers.  We propose that the photographs should be scanned and uploaded to a Flicker Pro account.  Flickr is a web 2.0 application that allows uploading, storage, and sharing of photographs.  (See http://www.flickr.com/about/ for more information.)  Account holders can choose different levels of privacy for their accounts; the photographs can be viewable only to them, only to invited parties, or they can be made public for general viewing on the web.  Each photograph can be described with a title, description and tags. (Tags are labels provided to describe items.  Tags are like keywords, they make items more searchable.) Those viewing the photos are able to add comments by signing into their Flickr accounts.  The result of posting photos to the account and labeling the photos with the name of the college, location, and any other information available should be that the pictures will turn up in the search results of people searching for photos of the college.  Since people can leave comments, they can add to the information that we know about each picture. That will accomplish two things.  First, it will increase the level of information that we have about the photographs.  Second, it will increase awareness and interest in the collection.  People will be able to access the photo collection from the library website as well as in random searching.  Adding the link to the website should help to create an initial buzz about the project.  While Flickr does offer a free service, there is a limit to the number of uploads available.  By investing in the Pro account, we will be able to upload unlimited images, and we will have access to statistics about the use of the site.

2.) Making the finding aid for the archives available via wiki has the advantage of making the information available on the web, in an easy to edit format, without having to add the information to the library catalog.  While the actual purpose of a wiki is to make collaborative work possible, this wiki will not allow the general public to make comments or changes on the page. The collaboration will be among staff, and the results will be accessible to the public to view but not edit.  PBwiki offers wiki access to educators for a reasonable price and is simple to master–very little staff time would be lost to learning how to navigate and edit the wiki.

The setup of the finding aid will be simple.  A main page will explain the organization of the archives and discuss access to the materials.  To be very clear, the contents of the archives are not going to be digitized and uploaded.  This is merely going to be a listing of the contents that are available for viewing by visiting the college.  Navigating the wiki will be similar to navigating a web page.  There will be links to each record group (ex: academics, student life, alumnae, library history, president’s collection); within the record groups there will lists of the boxes in each group and an outline of their contents.  As items are acquired for the archives, or when items are moved from group to group, the wiki can simply be updated by a work study student or one of the part time staff.  This has the advantage of speed and convenience.  There are other advantages to using a wiki as the source for the finding aid.  First, the user will be able to browse by area of interest, but they will also be able to perform a word search.  The search option could save considerable time when searching for all instances of a surname, for example.  Another advantage to using a wiki is that it will be possible to see when edits and additions have been made.  This could be very useful for a researcher who wants to know if a certain part of the collection has changed since his last visit to the archives, for example.  The fluidity of this medium will make its implementation very valuable for the library.

The Audience

The audience for the Flickr aspect of this project would be primarily current students, graduates of the college or long-time members of the faculty and staff.  The hope is that some people will find the account via the link from the archives page of the library web site, and others will stumble upon it through their internet surfing. 

The intended audience for the wiki would be anyone that is interested in using the archives for research or personal interest.

The Staff

This project will be implemented by the work study students employed by the library.  They will be supervised by one of the part time staff members, but will be allowed to work independently after they are trained.  After the initial setup and development of the project, keeping up with the maintenance should only take a few hours a week.

The Budget

Annual funds required will be less than $150. 

A Flickr Pro account costs $24.95/ year. (Information at http://www.flickr.com/upgrade/)

PBWiki charges $9.95 monthly for an educator’s wiki under their premium plan.  (http://pbwiki.com/education.wiki)

The total for two accounts is $144.35.

Concerns

The photographs in the archives all appear to have been taken by photographers employed by the college.  As such, the copyright for the photos should belong to the college.  No images should be posted online until the appropriate permissions have been obtained.

It could be argued that the older photos may never be identified because using a web application is unlikely to draw older users.  However, we can see by the way that older members of the community use the computer/internet resources in the library that computer illiteracy among the older community is merely a stereotype.

I wasn’t much of a Flickr user before this class, but I am really hooked. I like to option of adding different privacy settings to the photos.  I was previously using Snapfish to organize my digital photos, but I think I  may convert…

One Flickr toy that I would like to play with is the trading card.  They look fun and eye-catching.  It would be fun to make up a few and print them out with search tips and “did you knows.”  Small ones (trading card size) could go into the envelope when we mail library cards to new patrons.  Larger printouts (8.5×11) could go in acrylic holders near the computers….

One other point I discussed briefly with the librarian was the issue of print vs. online reference resources.  I wanted to know if IM reference questions were most likely to be answered with online resources.  This was something that I wanted to compare with my own experience.  The answer was that there is a tendency to use the resource that would be the most convenient for the patron (good answer!), and because of that online resources are often the choice.  This answer was balanced, though, with the information that most of the reference collection is digital rather than print. 

All in all, this was a very positive experience for me.  There were no technology glitches, and the interaction was very pleasant and professional.  I have to say that I felt as if I would get the same level of service using IM as if I were asking questions.  That’s fabulous, since that’s what I want my patrons to feel!

Blog’s main purpose:  The main purpose of the blog is to express the opinions of the author/s regarding whatever topics in librarianship may occur to her/him.  The point (as I see it) is to bring humor to discussions that might otherwise be taken too seriously.

Is it personal, professional, or mixed?  The blog is mainly professional, with enough personal touches in the writing to make it interesting and add to the humor. 

Is it authored by one person or several?  The blog is anonymous.  A recent post discussed the anonymity and suggested multiple authors.

How often does the author(s) post?  The amount of posts vary.  Some months have more than twenty, others only have a handful.  The month of May had five posts.

What is the audience (fellow professionals, library patrons, kids, etc.)?  The audience is fellow professionals–this blog has a wide leadership of all kinds of librarians.  The differences in attitude and point of view can be seen in the comments.

Any other comments you have about the blog, for instance, about the visual aspects: This a simply designed blog.  It’s easy to navigate and isn’t cluttered with too many extras.