Photo Sharing is fun! I got involved in photo sharing about 6 months ago. I was getting married and needed somewhere to post the pictures, so everyone could see them. I also wanted to post pictures from our honeymoon in Europe. So my friend, Amanda showed me the online program she used: Picassa. It's a program through Google which works like Flickr, except I can have my online documents, photo sharing site, blog, and reader all under one easy site. Months later I find myself constantly posting new photos for friends to view and taking more pictures than ever. First it was the stuffed hamsters my husband and I bought in Rome. They travel with us on trips and take photos doing all the things hamsters do. Then our new house. Then our friend Yasser's wedding. Then our new puppy, Zoey, pictured above. It has been easy for me to let everyone who wants to know what we're doing up to date.
When I began thinking about how I could apply this to the library, I admit I was at a bit of a loss. I have seen some good uses of photo pages. Primarily, for libraries, I have seen a few examples where photo sites were used during construction. Visitors to the site could see what the library was going to look like in architect's drawings, they could see how the progress was going, and they could see what the library looks like when finished, compared to where it started. Students can not only view what's going on, but see that their favorite study room is currently home to the painter's tools, or the coffee shop they normally get their caffeine from has moved to the other side of the building.(Important things to know in the early morning hours)
This also seemed like a good way to store archival information. No one may care today that we took out our reference collection shelves, painted stripes on our back wall, and put in a study/core collection area, but in a few years when it's all different, it'll be interesting to look back at the changes made.
However, I still have trouble seeing the value of photo sharing in a library on a day to day basis. As a small library we have few events. We do take pictures a few times a year, which may be interesting to post, but we don't have many annual events of interest and nothing weekly or monthly to speak of. This is why I am going to make an effort to read as many of the blog entries of my fellow students as I can. I hope to collect some good ideas to supplement mine.
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