Flickr

Flickr is a site for sharing photos.

Flickr can be found at http://www.flickr.com/

Like YouTube, you can search for material and view pictures without creating an account. However, if you want to upload photos, add comments etc you will need to create an account.

For this exercise:

1. Load up Flickr in your browser
2. To find out more about the site, use the Take the Tour button to look at all the features available
3. Search for Aberystwyth University

Once you see the pictures you can view the tags that people have added, descriptions etc. You can also find out more about the person who took the photo, by clicking on their username (a collection of photos uploaded by an individual is called a Photostream).

Not all photos uploaded to Flickr have to be made publicly available - you can limit the people who can see your photos (for example you can limit viewing to just named members of your family).

Flickr provide a useful set of FAQs including the following about how to use a photo you find on the site: http://www.flickr.com/help/general/#147

Note the two Flickr sub-sections which have pictures more freely available:

• Creative Commons - http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/. These photos can be used under certain circumstances. To see what you can do with the picture, have a look at the details listed on the left-hand side of the screen under 'Additional Information'.
• Commons - http://www.flickr.com/commons/. This provides access to photos from photograph archives. This project aims to get the public tagging and describing photos that might overwise only be seen by people visting the archive in question. Note that the NLW has uploaded photos to Commons.

Next steps

Have a look for some photos that might be used in a presentation about your work. View the Creative Commons information about them to see how they could be used.

Your thoughts

Let us know what you think about Flickr by commenting on this post. Some questions to get you started:

• What do you think about Flickr?
• Can you see any uses in the work you do?
• Are you tempted to create yourself an account?