Week 2: Flickr

I've been putting off blogging about Flickr. As the keeper of the images around here, I feel like I ought to have something profound to say about this image-centric portal of Web 2.0. Alas, I do not have a final decision about this one.

The VHS restricts the size of the images that we put on the web. In most cases we shrink our images to 72 dpi at a maximum of 400 x 600 pixels. This is the size of the images you see in the online catalog. They fit nicely onto your screen and do not require any scrolling. Anyone who purchases an image and receives permission from the VHS to put one of our images onto their website must abide by the same specs. We trust that they do.

We're also trusting the world not to abuse the low-res images that we do put on the web. It's a risk that the VHS is willing to take in exchange for a little exposure. Putting more images on the web can be a really good thing for us. I've seen it first hand. I'll add an image to the catalog one day and then I'll get a photo order for the image within a month or so. It doesn't happen with every image, but it happens enough that I know that putting images on our site certainly helps bring in photo orders...and a little revenue.

So, is the VHS ready for the exposure that comes with Flickr? Yes. I think so. I think it could be good for us. It might bring in more orders. It might bring in more patrons. I don't think anyone would be against either of those things.

But is VHS ready to take on the extra work of loading and monitoring the images on Flickr? No. I don't think so. We can barely keep up with the posting of images on our own site. I can't imagine trying to load, tag, label, credit and check in on Flickr too. There are a lot of really cool things that the VHS could do with our images, but we just don't have the Visual Services staff to do it all...yet!