Last week it was twitter, this
week it expands to Flickr, YouTube, Picasa and Google Plus. Although the huge
influx of information was overwhelming at first, and the pull to ‘surf’ into irrelevant
content on these sites was tempting, I manage to find my way through to the
other side (though I’m thinking of investing in stock in eye drops).
Flickr was
a great discovery and catches your attention immediately, although I will admit
to being slightly confused about some things. It seems to be divided into two
realms, Flickr Commons and Creative Commons. Flickr Commons was created to
increase access to public photographs as well as allow the public to contribute
their own considerable knowledge, while Creative Commons is an area for users
to submit their own collections. Flickr
Commons content is contributed by various world institutions allowing you to
see photographs you would have otherwise never seen unless you were a scholar
digging through a dusty records room, seemingly cut off from civilization as
you listen to the hum of fluorescent lights for hours on end. These photographs have information about the
content contained and relevant information below, including copyright info
stating if there are any restrictions on using them. A couple articles
explaining how this site is useful to museums and other institutions looking to
share history as well as programs being created for such institutions are Five
Ways Museums Are Using Flickr and Curate the Commons.
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| Flickr homepage screenshot |
YouTube was
familiar already, although more from a browser standpoint than an actual
uploader. I discovered I already had a YouTube account, which was a surprise because
I have no memory of creating one. Some
articles explaining what museums can gain from expanding to YouTube are FiveWays for Museums to Use YouTube and Beyond Launch: Museum Videos on YouTube,
the latter of which is quite long but goes more in depth of the benefits of
using the online tool and guidelines to keep in mind.
I already
had a Google Plus account, though I only used Gmail and thus never did anything
with the other applications, and upon exploring it contains a lot more than I
thought it did, which is kind of intimidating.
A good article that compares Google Plus to Flickr is I Have Discoveredthe Purpose of Google Plus!, with the author having definite opinions of the
two sites. Google Plus reminds me of Facebook, which I, at the moment, like
more. Google+ at Two Years: AnAssessment compares the site now to when it was created two years ago, and I
found myself relating to many of the authors views, such as “It didn't help
that when Google started touting its strong Google+ user numbers, the company
failed to distinguish between people who have Google+ accounts as the result of
being harangued into creating an account via Gmail versus those genuinely
engaged in the Google+ social network.” I was one of those people to suddenly found
themselves with such an account when all I wanted was an e-mail, and never
really explored it. An interesting
feature I was directed to was the Hangout feature, which reminded me of Skype,
though a bit more user friendly.
All in all,
there seems to be many sites that bring museums and historical sites to the
public rather than the other way around, a trend that has skyrocketed and seems
to reach new levels every day. Even better news is that much of it is free to
the public (up to a certain extent), which is good news to a college students
wallet.
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