Wednesday 17 April 2013

Thing 2: Taking a photo with a mobile device

A few words on Thing 2…

At the Robinson Library we use photos in lots of ways to promote the library and its resources. We take lots of photos of library events and displays and add them to our various social media platforms, as well as our Library Guides, http://bit.ly/14vj12o

The app we’ve used most is Instagram. This was particularly useful during the library refurbishment last year as we could tweet photos to show some of the changes that were happening. Many of the photos on this Pinterest board were taken during the refurbishment http://pinterest.com/newcastleunilib/the-robinson-library/. Some of my more artistic colleagues have also taken some lovely shots around campus and in Newcastle which we’ve added to our Pinterest and Flickr sites http://pinterest.com/newcastleunilib/on-campus/. It’s a good way of showing current and prospective students what they can expect from their new home. As well as this, we often run competitions on Twitter or Foursquare and take photos of the winners for promotional use. We have a consent form that they sign to allow us to use the images across our social media sites. All of these things help to engage users with what’s going on in the library and hopefully show that there’s more to the library than just books!



The advantage of using a mobile device to take photos is that it’s quicker and easier to shoot, edit and upload images to most social networks, instead of having to hook a camera up to a PC. I haven’t had much chance to play with the other apps suggested for Thing 2, but I think this post by  Ellyssa Kroski sums up some other useful ways to use Instagram http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2012/10-interesting-ways-to-use-instagram-for-your-library/.

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