What Our Photos Say About Us

Looking at our class flickr pages (here and here) it's easy to recognize a few patterns and see what we have in common. Our differences are harder to determine from these images, though.

Similarities

• Looks like we've got a lot of animal lovers!
  
• A lot of the photos are of pieces of art or are artistic themselves, so it seems we have a general appreciation for art and design.
• I see pictures of vacation destinations--we're a group of globetrotters (or, maybe we just all really need a vacation!).
• Computers feature very prominently in our home, school, and work lives.
• But many of us also included pictures of books. Who says print is dead?
  

Differences

• We're spread out geographically.
• We work in different types of libraries.

My Educational Experience

I chose to include four thumbnails from my "educational experience" set on Flickr because, while there are many things I could say about my educational experience, I think the most important thing is to highlight that my library school education isn't limited to the physical classroom. Yes, my school and the community of faculty, staff, and students there, are important parts of my education (and of my social life, too!).

The picture of the capitol represents how I am able to take advantage of local resources outside of school. I have been fortunate to have two mentors from public libraries in the area and have taken advantage of several continuing education opportunities through the Central Texas Library Association. I am also a member of the Texas Library Association and thanks to two stipends I have been awarded this year, I will be attending the TLA annual conference in Houston this year.

The picture of my office represents how I am able to connect to other students and librarians around the world through my internet connection. I'm subscribed to something like 30 blogs on library topics, I participate in e-mail listservs, and I am taking this course online through the WISE consortium.

Finally, the last picture is of the public library where I work full-time. Being able to apply classroom lessons at work and to relate work experiences in the classroom has been invaluable to me. I feel that the combination of the two has prepared me quite well for my career as a professional librarian.

Check out more pictures of my educational experience here!
Check out my classmates' pictures here!

Thing 6: The Monster Mashup

I promise I did poke around Flickr and look at several of the mash-ups, but two of my favorites were linked right from the CTLS 23 Things blog. I just think Spell with Flickr is fun (but why isn't it Spellr, I wonder) and I think Mappr is not only fun, but also a great way to organize photos and create connections (and isn't that what this 2.0 business is all about?). I enjoyed searching for my hometown and seeing several photos of hot air balloons, a pleasant reminder of our annual hot air balloon festival. I haven't been able to make it to the festival in nine years, but I have really fond memories of it and hot air balloons always make me think of home.

Thing 5: Flickr

Here's a photo I found on Flickr when I searched "Pflugerville." (from: http://flickr.com/photos/txkimmers/3157796/) The whole "love written in grass" thing is a little contrived for me, but I like the style of the photograph and I love the bright orange flip-flops near the bright green grass on the concrete gray background.

I took a couple of pictures of the Pflugerville Community Library, but opted not to sign up for Flickr after all. I already share photos through Shutterfly (for sharing with family because it's what some of them were already using); Kodak (for sharing with friends for the same reason); and Facebook. I'm also wary of signing up for anything else online. Just for the heck of it, I recently made a list of all of the online tools I use and my username for each one (don't worry--I shredded it!). There were around 60 things and just while typing this paragraph I've thought of two more I forgot! I've got an Amazon account, a Facebook page, three e-mail addresses, a LiveJournal, etc. and so on and so forth. It's becoming unmanageable and I am a bit concerned about security.

Extra Credit: Compare Picasa and Flickr

Picasa and Flickr seem to have a lot of the same features: photo editing, sharing, organizing functions, etc. Flickr seems more user friendly and yet, if I were to use either, it would probably be Picasa because I already have a Google account and I wouldn't have to add anything to my list of usernames!