Library Finds Group on Flickr

January 13, 2010 · Posted in Fun · View Comments

cc image used courtesy of herzogbr on flickr

Anyone who’s worked in a library in any capacity knows patrons leave behind all sorts of things, some strange, some amusing and some that just make you scratch your head and wonder. Brian Herzog of Swiss Army Librarian has created a Flickr group where we can share these little treasures with each other. Similar to Found Magazine, but just for libraries. Go take a look, join up and share the things you’ve found in your library.

Brian says:

I’m not uploading anything that seemed personally-identifiable: peoples’ first and last names, phone numbers, email addresses, account login and passwords – and there were a frighteningly large number of these.

That’s good advice any contributor should follow. Now go take a picture of that cheesecake pan someone left in the stacks & upload it! Have fun!

Tags: <groups, library finds, photos, pictures>

How to attribute a Creative Commons photo from Flickr

September 28, 2009 · Posted in Flickr · View Comments

Yes, the absolute correct way! I previously asked how you credit a CC photo from Flickr. Since then I’ve been doing my research and here is the results – The correct way to credit a photo.

You need to follow the guidelines set by the license. I’m only going to address attribution. According to Creative Commons you need to:

keep intact any copyright notices for the Work
credit the author, licensor and/or other parties (such as a wiki or journal) in the manner they specify;
include the title of the Work
the URL for the work if applicable
If you are making a derivative word or adaptation, in addition to the above, you need to identify that your work is a derivative work i.e., “This is a Finnish translation of the [original work] by [author].” or “Screenplay based on [original work] by [author].”

My addition/suggestion

Let the author know. Leave a comment on the image, send them an email, a Flickrmail whatever. Flickr doesn’t provide trackbacks, if you don’t tell them you used it they may never know. People like to know when others are using their works or citing them. Plus, it’s just nice.

That is a lot to include. So what does a perfect attribution look like? How do you include all that information?

Example 1. If you grab an image from Flickr you can choose the “Blog This” option which will give you the title, the author, and links to both images and user profile. It’s missing the information about the Creative Commons license and a link.

The monkeys are here!

Originally uploaded by Librarian by Day

blog this test

Example 2. You can download the image from Flickr. This one is missing everything, it’s up to you to provide the author, title the work, provide the CC license and links.

Example 3. Lately I’ve been formatting mine like this. The photo links back to the photo on Flickr and the caption indicates is a CC photo and gives the name of the photographer. I also leave a comment on the photo on Flickr thanking them for using a CC license and letting them know I’ve used it in a blog post with a subtle link to the post.

CC Image courtesy of Librarian by Day on Flickr

I’ve also seen bloggers use a footnote to the post saying Photo Credit: Librarian by Day, with “Librarian by Day” linked to the image or profile. What are we all still missing? The title, the Creative Commons License used and links to the CC and author profile

Example 4. You can use imagecodr.org to create it. You put in the URL of the photo it automatically does the rest! The alt text contains the author title and credits Flickr. The image links to Flickr. It adds the CC license image and author adds appropriate links.

by Librarian by Day

My problem with this one is I can’t get both the image and the text to align right in Wordpress. WP doesn’t allow linking in captions. The information underneath isn’t technically a caption. Maybe someone with more coding savvy than me can figure it out.

Example 5. A perfect attribution would look like this:

Ok that’s a perfect attribution, it’s a bit more work. Does it need to go directly under the photo? I don’t know.

Good enough?

This may be a case where good enough works. I can’t recall ever seeing a Flickr photo with a perfect attribution and the world isn’t falling apart. I’m just not sure if what I consider good enough is what you consider good enough. There is a big difference between the bare minimum and good enough. To me, my current way, example 2, is good enough. It includes the name, indicates CC license, links to the original image and I leave a comment on the image letting the author know.

Will you use the perfect attribution? If not what is good enough for you?

Search Flickr by Color

February 2, 2009 · Posted in Flickr, Free Tools, Fun · View Comments

I came across this cool tool from Idée on Circulation this morning. It allows you to search Flickr Creative Commons liscensed photos (or photos from Alamy) by clicking on the color or colors you want the photos to have. You then click on the thumbnail to get the photo and the liscense information.

red

The only down side is the collage doesn’t list the url of the photos it generates so you can’t really use it as a whole and follow the attribution part of CC.

Tags: <alamy, color, colour, creative commons, Flickr, photographs, photos, pictures, search>