Social Media Part II: Pinterest: MLA, April 26, 2013
1. Allison Babin, Young Adult Librarian, babin@noblenet.org
Ona Ridenour, Assistant Communications Librarian, ridenour@noblenet.org
Beverly Public Library
www.beverlypubliclibrary.org
www.pinterest.com/beverlypublic
Social Media Part II: Pinterest and Twitter : MLA, April 26, 2013
2. • What is it?
• Getting started
• Pinterest etiquette
• How we use it
• Time and effort
• Other libraries on Pinterest
• Suggested uses
• Copyright concerns
Pinning is very quick – it can take as little as a few seconds, especially if you want to use existing content for your pin. Writing original content that corresponds to the material can obviously take a bit longer. For example, when pinning straight from the catalog, you can just use the annotation that already exists in the summary field. Alternatively, if you wanted to add to, or replace, that content with your own review of the book, it would take a bit more time to write that. So any “time burden” is essentially for content creation; the actual pinning process is very fast. Perhaps unlike Twitter or Facebook, it’s very easy – and in fact very logical – to share the “burden” of the work across departments without having to be overly concerned about “blowing up people’s feeds” or duplicating lots of content. Departments can create and manage their own board, or boards, and pin relevant content. At our Library, we share the responsibility between Reference, Children’s, and YA. In each of these cases, it’s very organic for each department to pin the content that pertains most to them (i.e. I pin new YA books, and Ona pins new adult books), and it’s also easy for us to contribute to boards we all have a stake in, as with Banned Books Week. It doesn’t really require any effort to coordinate this; multiple users can be logged in and pinning at the same time.
Libraries of all kinds – academic, public, school, and special - are participating in Pinterest. For the most part, libraries of varying types are using Pinterest largely in the same way, though certain boards may make more sense for libraries of certain types and sizes. In the next few slides, I’ll be showing some example boards from various types of libraries. Examples mostly taken from this article: http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/25-libraries-we-most-love-on-pinterest
An academic library, the Daytona State College Library, has a great board advertising their eResources. This is a good example that translates just as well for public librarians. For images, they’ve used the buttons provided by the publishers, linked to the database, and the descriptions contain helpful explanations of what they’re for. This is also a good example of how you can use Pinterest to really just showcase content you already have on your website, but in a different way that might help to garner it new attention and/or reach new users.
In addition to showcasing your online databases, you can create boards for eBooks and even group them by format for the patron’s ease. In this example, a library has created two boards for eBooks – one for ePub format and one for Kindle. Of course this example could be applied to downloadable audiobooks too.
Several libraries, ours included, showcase their museum pass collection with pins to the websites for the museums they carry passes for. We just pinned the website for each museum so patrons can learn more about them, and made our final pin a link to the museum pass reservation site where patrons can reserve passes online. This brings up an important point -- as of now, you cannot reorder the pins on a board, so sometimes you’ll want to think strategically about the order you’re pinning. In this case, you might want to pin that last so it stays up at the top.
Several libraries have boards showing off their physical facilities – essentially giving tours of the building. The Carnegie-Stout library’s board “Around the library” takes a little bit of a different perspective by showcasing historical pictures AND contemporary shots. Eisenhower Library in IL did a really nice job of using Instagram photos for their tour board. Some libraries have also created boards of “behind the scenes” photos, like the Fullerton Public Library.
Another board that many libraries have created is a “meet the staff” board with links to staff member bios. Some libraries include email addresses and phone numbers for staff members in the pin descriptions, making it very easy to get in contact with them.
It’s also easy to make a board that showcases events at your library. You can pin images and video (which I’ll cover in more detail in a bit) to provide patrons with more information about library programs. This board is a general board for library events, but we have also seen boards that are dedicated to a single library event – such as World Book Night.
Similar to some examples Ona mentioned earlier, you can basically create a board for any type of booklist you can imagine! Some popular boards among libraries include “Staff Picks”, “Read It Before You See It”, and lists of various Award Winners. We especially like when these pins link straight to the OPAC, so patrons can reserve the books directly from the lists.
In contrast to the aforementioned ideas, we’ve seen lots of libraries (especially public) creating a myriad of boards that simply celebrate reading in a variety of “fun” ways, such as Lawrence Public Library’s Celebrity Bookworms board. As Ona mentioned, these types of boards tend to get a lot of likes and repins, so they seem to be worth the relatively small time investment for what you earn in terms of gaining followers and building up your Pinterest community.
Bring visibility to digital archives like the New York Public Library by pinning images from your collections. The NYPL keeps this board active by pinning an image a day – a great way of keeping the content fresh and not clogging the feed!
Joining a shared board is essentially like receiving a gift of free content! By participating, you gain instant access to a large list compiled by other Pinterest users with lots of followers. This list, “What’s on your playlist?” was created by the O’Fallon Public Library, and they keep the board active by inviting other libraries to join. You can see on the left side of this board that it says “ADD A PIN” – that’s because our library is a member. This is also a great example of where pinning video content makes a lot of sense. Users can watch the videos right from within the board.
We’ve also seen a few libraries popping up with interactive contests on Pinterest. During National Library Week, the Kansas City Public Library ran one called “The Perfect Library” in which they invited users to pin images of what their dream library would look like. They chose the winner based on the user that got the highest number of likes, repins, and overall originality and style. Others: Inspired by the Book Contest (Westerville Library) Create your Character’s Outfit ( Otis Public Library in Norwich, CT)
I’m not going to read through this list of board ideas, but I wanted to leave you with a resource you can consult after our presentation today if you need some inspiration. As you can see, ideas for boards range from the simply fun and entertaining, to the rather dry but very useful. We encourage you to think of fun, new ideas that other libraries can copy and use too! Some libraries do an especially good job of coming up with catchy names for boards – and this makes sense for some boards more than others. I’m not sure NEW ADULT FICTION needs a catchy name, but EATING AND DRINKING is a fun name for a recipes board, for instance. http://www.voya.com/2012/05/25/how-to-use-pinterest-for-your-library/ http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33457/28-Creative-Pinboard-Ideas-From-Real-Brands-on-Pinterest.aspx
I also just wanted to touch briefly on how Pinterest integrates with some of the other social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
You can link your Pinterest account to your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. The integration with Facebook can also go a step further, by setting the “Publish activity to Facebook timeline” switch to on, you can have ALL of your Pinterest activity automatically posted to Facebook. This would include every time you like, pin, or re-pin something, so it’s something you want to think about before turning on.
The Pinterest Page App on Facebook allows you to integrate your Pinterest content directly into your library’s page. It’s quick and easy to install.
The app allows users to choose whether they want this app to feature all of their Pinterest boards, or a single board. This is a nice customizable element. For example, our library has two Facebook pages - a general page for all audiences that Ona manages, and then a separate Teens page that I run. While it makes sense to feature all of our Pinterest boards on our general Facebook page, it is less the case with the Teens page, so I have customized this element to show only our New Teen Books. One of the nice things about this integration is also that even if someone doesn’t have a Pinterest account, they can see the content via Facebook.
The integration with Twitter allows you to share pins to your Twitter account.
The integration with YouTube allows users to easily pin YouTube videos to their boards. (If you’re a Vimeo fan, this applies to you too.) It’s generally suggested that you want to be pin shorter videos, because Pinterest is designed for browsing, and people might not want to watch a long video while using it. That said, it’s always good practice to include the length of the video in the description, as well as the word VIDEO. Then people know what they’re getting into, and using the word video will help other people searching for this media type to find it. Source: http://www.onlinevideo.net/2012/09/the-definitive-pinterest-video-guide-always-be-sharing/
This is just another example of a library using videos – this particular library has pinned videos they’ve created themselves of story times. Other great ideas for using videos on Pinterest for librarians include book trailers, movie trailers, and screencasts.
I also just wanted to quickly address copyright concerns, because I know there have been quite a few concerns about them in relation to Pinterest. Some people speculate that most of what you’re doing on Pinterest may in fact, actually fall under fair use. But to mitigate your concerns, here are a few things you can do. One of the best things you can do is click on pins and visit the site they link to BEFORE you repin something to make sure it’s sourced to the original, and legitimate website. By pinning original content, you know the source, and you can judge yourself whether you feel it’s fair to pin it or not. And when you see the PIN IT button, like in this image to the left, that’s a pretty safe bet that it’s fine to pin it – they’re giving you an invitation. When in doubt, ASK! And like you may already do on flyers and websites, you can use creative commons licensed content to be safe. YALSA offers 6 tips for “safer pinning”. http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2012/03/29/pinterest-copyright-concerns/
