Flickr

My first go to for images is the Flickr’s advanced search because it allows searching of images with Creative Commons licenses.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt content includes photographs, Photoshop add-ons (brushes, textures, borders, graphics, etc.), animations, arts, crafts, and more. Most of the users make their resources free but request that you leave them a comment about how you used their work. www.deviantart.com

Open Clipart

OpenClipart.org is an archive of public domain clip art. This site offers a wide variety of clip art including vintage and retro illustrations and modern graphics. www.openclipart.org

Wikimedia Commons

“A database of 6,576,096 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.” commons.wikimedia.org

Find Icons & Icon Finder

Search engines for interface icons. Looking for new icons for your web page or OPAC? findicons.com and www.iconfinder.com

From Old Books

“Scanned Images, Engravings and Pictures From Old Books. Over 2,600 high-resolution free images scanned from more than 160 different old or rare books.” www.fromoldbooks.org

In true 2.0 “practice what you preach” fashion – it’s available in a variety of formats!

• Read it & comment on it via the comment press version
• Video of the report presentation
• Read the study’s wiki
• Good old fashioned PDF

Read what our University Librarian Paul Courant has to say about it.

I helped put together a few visual projects to describe what “1 million” means and to highlight some of the people behind it all. I also took some photos of some of the materials and tools that these people use to make the million happen.

http://www.lib.umich.edu/news/millionth.html

The first exhibit is about former U Michigan Coach Bo Schemblecher. Congrats to the planning committee because it looks great. I was asked to take some photos of the exhibit and they’re now available on flickr:

1. Interact with the patrons (outside of a usability setting): reference, email, suggestion box, etc. If reference isn’t part of your regular job duties, volunteer for a shift of your own (or just sit in on one now and then). If you’re lucky, you’ll have interactions dealing directly with the resources you are have a say in changing. But at the very least, you’ll get to experience the patrons on a human level – what brought them to the reference desk, what types of assignments they have, what language do they use to describe their needs, what they’re generally distracted by or have difficulty with…
2. Talk to the people who interact with the patrons: (reference & instruction librarians). Not only do these people interact with the patrons everyday, they’re the ones who have to develop lessons and explain all those difficult to use resources over and over again. I guarantee they all have something to say about the difficulties of using the various library websites, opacs, and other resources!
3. Log Analysis: what are they searching for on the library website and not finding? Are they searching for “Psychinfo” and not finding it because it’s actually “Psycinfo”?
4. Be where they are (online): search the web & blogs for mentions of your library. Are students taking lots of photos of your libraries or making videos in your library and putting them online? Are they posting to their blogs about the library or about research, and what are they saying? Join Facebook groups. For example there are facebook groups for UM incoming 1st years, individual schools and departments have groups, etc. You can find out a lot about what are they worried about, what technology they’re using, how much beer they’re drinking, etc.
5. Be where they are (in the library): go sit at a computer in the computer lab or group study areas in the library and eavesdrop. Just be stealth about!
6. Ask them (Guerilla Tests): if you have a simple question you’d like answered this is ideal. It could be as easy as “We have a service called _________ what do you think that means?” Or, print out the home page of your library website and ask them “where would you click if you wanted to find ____________?”
7. Ask them (Surveys): surveys are a great way to get lots of quantitative and qualitative information. My 2 favorite survey questions are open-ended “What do you like most about the library” and “What do you like least about the library” – you’ll be surprised how they have to say for both.
8. Ask them (student advisory groups): lots of libraries already have student advisory groups in place and chances are they’d be willing to let you use that group to conduct a focus group or do formal or informal user testing.

To help with this, I’ve started a flickr account to collect Library Designs. I started with about 20 of my favorite library websites and took screen shots of the home page and a second level page.

For my first themed set, I picked out the sites that prominently link to their library’s email or chat reference services. I’ll formally report on this later.

I’ll add to this as topics come up. If anyone has suggestions for nice library websites, opacs, or digital library interfaces – I’m open to suggestions!

User’s Lib Flickr Design Library

Check it out: Celebrate Banned Books Week Flickr set

Even our University Librarian Paul Courant participated!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

From the news item:

Subversive. Objectionable. Offensive. Inappropriate. These are just a few of the terms used to describe many of the books that are challenged by society every year.

To participate in national Banned Books Week (Sept 29 – Oct 6, 2007), we invited our staff to highlight some of their favorite banned books in our library collections. Now these highlighted books and the wonderful people who select, acquire, organize, preserve and manage our collections are featured in Flickr, a photo-sharing web site!

The freedom to make your own decisions about what you want to read, and to have access to these items, are rights that libraries fully support. The University of Michigan’s library collection reflects these principles in its diversity. We invite you to get acquainted with our staff and our collections through our Celebrate Banned Books Week Flickr photo set.

For more information on intellectual freedom, censorship, and to view some banned book lists, see:

• Banned Books Week
• 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books
• OCLC Banned Book List
• ACLU FreedomWire

I’d love to see this in other departments and other libraries.

Flickr set: Pre-Shelf Life of Library Materials

“Library materials waiting their turn to be sorted, unpacked, and processed.”