Thing 14: Sourcing and using good images

Write a blogpost about reusing images and what you have done in the past 

I found myself nodding in agreement with Researchabc and Thelibrarianerrant, both of whom owned to a measure of restraint in the use of images.  I excuse my own lack of pictures, when necessary, by reference to television jokes about the Lord Privy Seal.

I have used images in the Haddon Library's PowerPoints for presentations at induction time and in the Alumni Festival.  I'm not posting these, as they would make no sense without the accompanying spoken text, but I can say that I've paid due respect to copyright, and enjoyed searching Flickr's Creative Commons area for images to use.

Find a really good picture that is shareable and embed it in your blogpost with appropriate credit

New Bridge by Cycling Man  CC BY-NC-ND

The picture shows Christchurch Bridge in Reading.  I haven't yet photographed this bridge myself, or cycled over it, but I have kinsfolk in Reading, and probably will do those things.

Write about how you found using the tools to find images and crediting the image itself

My exploration of the sites recommended in the blog post was unsystematic, with searches at different times for images of fire, demolition, rivers, cathedrals, and bears.  The picture I eventually chose for this blog was from none of those searches: I returned to the familiar Flickr Creative Commons area and looked for that specific bridge, a kind of substitute for pedalling a bike over it.

I hope the licence is correctly made.  It's not my first use of a CC licence, but as this post is an exercise, I looked at Creative Commons' own site for i's to dot and t's to cross, and believe I have done so.

Exploring the blog post's other recommendations was fun. I expect to use Pixabay, Unsplash, Morguefile, and Photopin again, next time I'm looking for pictures in earnest, and I may recommend them to friends making posters and church magazines.  I'm afraid I still can't see how to search Travel Coffee Book and New Old Stock, and am less likely to revisit them therefore.  I failed also with HaikuDeck; but PowerPoint, Open Office Impress, SlideShare and Creative Commons will between them probably do me what HaikuDeck would have done.

Thing 13: Creative Commons

My main use of Creative Commons licences, up to now, has been with regard to other people's work. For the 2011 round of 23 Things, I made the experiment of stitching a CC BY-NC-SA logo to a piece of artwork I embedded in my blog.  I expected then that I would be making more extensive use of such logos on artwork copied in the Haddon Library blog, but in fact I have not yet done anything of the kind.

For Alumni Festival presentations at the Haddon Library, however, I've made a point of seeking images first in the Creative Commons area of Flickr.  The reproduction has the CC keyboarded into the credits, even if the logo has been lacking.  And when readers have asked for images they can reproduce, Flickr CC is where I refer them.

I'm glad that the posts by other participants in 23 Research Things reflect a similar diffidence -- gladder still that the view is, for so many of them, "CC is great and now I've looked at it properly I'll use it more."  That's more or less what I said in 2011, I know, and I haven't used CC all that much more since then.  But I'm having to prove myself in a lot of areas at the moment, and greater mastery of CC licensing is clearly one that's worth it.

Things 9 & 10: Flickr & the use of images

Exploring Flickr and its images has been fun. I have seen photos of the village where I grew up, and even ventured a couple of comments on one of them. I have looked a little closer at Idlethink's 'bookporn' photo of the library where I now work, and added a note about how people can hear more of its doings. Do people account such a gesture imaginative or desperate?

I have added Idlethink and Sir Cam to the things I follow with Google Reader.

I dabbled a little in the exploration of photos tagged URBEX (urban exploration, especially of derelict buildings) and, I'm afraid, ventured from there into pictures, and even videos, of demolition.

Then it struck me that the best way to focus my exploration of Creative Commons licences would be to seek images that could be incorporated into electronic greetings cards. The images I have saved to disk are of my sister's church and a landmark on the National Cycle Network. But I see myself contacting the photographers before I embark on any attempt to use them in ecards. It would undoubtedly count as making derivative works, rather than simply reproducing; besides, I'm not sure where, in an ecard, I would put the CC licence.

My own presence on Flickr is minimal. I take very few photos. I expect my future dealings with Flickr to be, as in this exploration, a matter of using the resources it offers rather than adding to them.

OK, down to business. Thing 3: blogs

It says "Write something here about what you hope to get out of Cam 23 and your previous experience of Web 2.0 and social media."

What I hope to get out of Cam23 is a proficiency in the use of tools I have up to now dabbled with, in hopes of making myself a bit more useful. As to my previous experience of those things (shown in cam23 order, and not shown at all if my experience is zero):

iGoogle

I appear to have got up an iGoogle page at some point in the last couple of years, and have, for cam23, put more stuff into it and made it my homepage.

RSS

I have since last autumn used RSS in connection with Twitter -- an RSS feed on an advance Twitter search tells me whenever anyone tweets the words Haddon, archaeology, anthropology, arch or anth within 15 miles of Cambridge. But I must admit I've never really found the swing of RSS feeds in general, or seen why going to a bookmarked RSS feed is meant to be less bother than going to a bookmarked web page. Perhaps I will know better by the end of cam23.

blogging

I have been writing the Haddon Library's blog since the summer of 2007, but that's in space from the Computer Officer. I did acquire some LiveJournal space by having my say on a story in the Independent in February 2009, but I've made no further use of LiveJournal.

Doodle

I use this regularly to schedule meetings, and have tried to use it as a substitute for meetings. But the groups concerned have not always been willing to join in.

Google Calendar

My brother set up a Google calendar two years ago to co-ordinate family visits to parents. I'd been using mosuki.com since 2006, but that was taken down last month. I am now using Google with everyone else.

Twitter

I joined Twitter in April 2009 and started tweeting in earnest a couple of months later. My tweets are of two kinds, in general: responses to other people's tweets and announcements of things that are inherently public. I keep my enthusiasm for Twitter under control by the rule that I don't look at it during working hours if anything is in my email inbox. I also use Twitter (see above, under RSS feeds) in hopes of hearing what people are saying about the Haddon. So far, be it admitted, I haven't heard very much that way.

Flickr

I have a few photos on Flickr. I very rarely take photos myself, but I have had more experience of uploading pictures elsewhere. My wife Clare and I use her photos in e-cards.

Wordle

An excellent displacement activity, when I am stuck on minutes or a heavy memo, is to throw what I've got so far into Wordle and see what comes out.

Slideshare

I have not put anything on to Slideshare, but I have occasionally viewed presentations on it by speakers I've been to hear in person.

Delicious

This is a new enthusiasm of mine. Saving web resources to my Delicious account, and being able to call them up on any computer, is better than downloading them to one machine and then having to recall the URL on another machine, or copy the downloaded resources on to a data stick with all its vulnerabilities. Though I can see, after the Mosuki sadness, that I need to be a bit better prepared for Delicious to crash, or go down.

LibraryThing

I have been using this for about a year to catalogue our books at home -- specifically, to catalogue our music scores.

Facebook

I'm writing on what some have designated as Quit Facebook Day. I don't see myself taking that step, partly because my interest in Facebook has declined as my enthusiasm for Twitter has grown. My usual metaphors for the difference between the two are these: that if Facebook fits its 'walled garden' soubriquet, then Twitter is more like seed on the wind, as per Cory Doctorow; and that Facebook is like a holiday camp while Twitter is like a cycling tour.

Zotero

I have used this in preparation for an Alumni Weekend presentation. I expected the wrong things -- starting with a hope that it would function like Delicious or Google Docs and not need carting from machine to machine -- and maybe cam23 will let me see more point to it, or to its rival Mendeley.

Google Docs

These are another thing that I was introduced to my my brother, who got up a document for the discussion of certain shared concerns. Clare & I keep our Christmas cards list on it now.

YouTube

I have occasionally followed links to videos on YouTube. I have not, so far, made much use of it as a resource to be deliberately explored, though this evening I made a desultory YouTube search for llamas, in hopes of adding their vocalisations to the animal sounds I can mimic.

Wikis

I have not explored wikis much beyond Wikipedia itself. On Wikipedia, I have made a few tiny corrections, a bit like annotating the programme during a concert interval, to Wikipedia entries -- see those for Gringley-on-the-Hill, Michael Drayton, open secret, and Polesworth.

That's my experience up to now. I will do the reading for thing 3, & register this blog as part of thing 4, later in the week.