Even though I have used a Flickr account at home since last year, I had not known about creating tags for the photos, finding other photos by Popular Tags, or that libraries around the world were using the photo-storing and sharing site.
I have had mixed feeling regarding Flickr. When first using it I uploaded vacation photos and visited a few friends who were on, but then I neglected it for months. Exploring this method for “A Dozen Ways to Two-Step,” I went to my home Flickr site and was surprised I could access photos I thought I had coded private. In addition, there was a positive comment about one of my Irish photos from 5 weeks ago, requesting me to submit it to a Flickr group and I had never been notified/e-mailed about it! Another disturbing element concerns a friend who deleted their entire account because they had an uneasy feeling about one person taking an unnatural interest in a granddaughter. It was a pretty radical step, but my friend felt “better safe than sorry.”
Personally, since my friend’s experience, I have uploaded photos mainly to FaceBook. There, you–hopefully--know your friends and can easily unfriend or delete them, if needed.
Professionally, I enjoyed looking at library tags in Flickr. Some interesting ones were a Canadian photography club at public library, a tour of Irish libraries, and the Library Underground. After doing various searches, I only found a few photos of my own library, by one of our librarians, and no, there were no people.
Every year, my library conducts groups of first year students on a fun hunt-and-seek introduction to the library. I have a memory of photos taken and shared, perhaps on a campus server, but I don’t believe any photos where uploaded to a site such as Flickr. Since I’m not a librarian, I don’t know if the noted controversy about using patron’s images helped define that decision.
Curious about non-academic city public libraries, I looked at web branch pages and saw rotating photo cubes of people at each location. Clicking on these brought me to Flickr sites of individual libraries.
Each branch location varied greatly. Some only had a few photos (17), some had over 1,600 (the main branch). Some avoided using people poses and mainly showed exterior building shots with architectural elements and flowers, as well as seasonal book displays inside. On the opposite spectrum, another branch was not at all shy repeatedly pointing the camera at children and families at each activity! So, there doesn't seem to be any consistent policy about not using images of public library patrons.
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