Scrimmaging for imaging

Yesterday, Lorcan Dempsey mentioned the ‘Using Flickr to Organise a Collection of Images‘ document, a recent publication from TASI (the Technical Advisory Service for Images).

Lorcan wisely highlights concerns that contributors may have, namely getting the files back in the event of site cessation. Of more immediate concern might be the fact that there is no native bulk download, whereas bulk uploads are well served by Flickr’s upload tool. In addition, downloading forfeits the photo’s metadata, so information added within Flickr – such as tags and title – is lost. It is, therefore, a bit of a battle getting back what was contributed and anything added to it. Nevertheless, there are ‘learning images’ out there: Patrick Lynch contributed a set of medical illustrations to Flickr and Wikimedia Commons, and the Flickr tag ‘learningobjects‘ shows some other examples. Indeed, given the absence of a hierarchical category structure for images within Flickr, tags are of vital importance.

I think it’s well worth using community sites such as Flickr and SlideShare to promote existing educational content. At JISC CETIS, we have been using SlideShare for copies of presentations (embedded here) and Flickr would be an ideal place to showcase photographs from events such as our annual conference. Given the aforementioned concerns about material longevity, it would be wise to use sites like Flickr as supplementary showcases and “not to rely on it as the sole means of storage”.