What makes Pinterest a preferable social network for organizations such as libraries to embrace?
Pinterest is a social network (a place where people come together to connect) which focuses on visual content, such as pictures, graphics, diagrams, logos, videos, animations and other imagery. In fact, without an image or a video, you can not post to Pinterest. This sets it apart from other social networks, like Facebook, where a posting can be text-based.
fig 04 – princeton public library
Libraries can make use of this visually oriented service to engage patrons and other stakeholders differently than they can in person, on other social networks, or through other communication methods. Because of the visual focus of the system, Pinterest can become a visual catalog for browsing departments, a magazine of the latest program offerings, or an archive of events and milestones. Used effectively, following guidelines and examples below, you may be able to entice an otherwise untapped audience through visual means.
What is the social networking benefit of Pinterest?
fig 05 notifications
Libraries may wonder how Pinterest is of value comparative to other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Pinterest is useful from a social marketing perspective in several ways. Many of its users consider it addictive, and spend hours using the system each week. As users click on one interesting item, they are shown other related items of similar interest. They can collect the most interesting items they find into ‘boards’, essentially making them curators and explorers of valuable content. People can then find, share, and follow those pins and boards, creating a sort of community of common interest. When users in the system find other users with similar tastes, they can follow those users and be exposed to more interesting, valuable, curated content. In the case of libraries or librarians as users, one can connect with patrons, be exposed to library trends by following other interesting libraries, follow publishers and media producers who share content that they find to be of value to their patrons, staff and other stakeholders. In particular, because Pinterest is a purely visual sharing system (as stated above, to create a pin, you must upload or find an image, graphic, photo or video,) it allows a user to very quickly assess if they are in philosophical, ideological, or simply visual alignment with another Pinterest user. Compare this to other systems, where you might have to assess alignment by reading through a few (or many more) tweets or status updates, which can be time-consuming and analytical. With Pinterest, a patron can look at a library’s page of pins or boards of another user and judge ideological alignment much quicker, sometimes in seconds. When libraries make sensible, brand related choices about their pins and boards in Pinterest, it can be incredibly powerful as a community building tool.
The following posts were written and proposed as a book chapter on Pinterest for Libraries, but the chapter was not accepted. Sad, except that now it means that I have some content to share publicly with you! Over the next few days, I’ll be publishing the chapter as a series of posts.
John LeMasney of LeMasney Technology and Design Consulting will discuss Pinterest, a visual social bookmarking system that is often dismissed as simply a place for wedding photos and pictures of vegetarian recipes. Pinterest is a way to collect, curate, share and discuss photos and videos of any kind, and this article will discuss 10 ways you can use it to engage patrons and other stakeholders in the visual brand, items, and topics at libraries. You can increase the visibility of your programs, and give people new ways to click through to discover and borrow your assets.
A Pinterest glossary
fig 01 – lemasney on Pinterest
I thought that it would be useful to start with a short glossary of terms related to Pinterest for the uninitiated. There is a culture to Pinterest, and with any good culture comes a kind of vocabulary.
Pin – A pin is a single shared image or video on Pinterest. A pin consists of a digital image or video, an optional link to the original site, and a description for the pin, up to 500 characters long. Great pins are attractive regardless of their context, but their context, history, and source should be present. Think of a pin as a way to inform people of information literacy, scholarship, and ideological respect in addition to the basic idea of the pin itself. Libraries can use pins to share elements of their organizational brand: what makes them unique as a library.
Pinning – Pinning is the act of sharing a pin on Pinterest. Pinning can be done exceptionally well or rather lazily. Pinners who care will add metadata, a reasonable description, links back to source sites, and encourage discussion. Pinners who are just passing the time will put up a single word description, not consider the link or source, and not respond to discussions, repins, and other cultural niceties. A library pinterest effort might include an emerging technologies librarian as the sole pinner, but there is a potential for richness when administrators, staff, and patrons are all invited to pin.
fig 02 – also pinned to
Repin – A repin is the act of taking a pin that already exists on Pinterest and sharing it on one of your own boards, effectively giving it a vote of confidence and admiration. Repinning is a kind of moral engine on Pinterest, helping people’s pins to reach larger and larger audiences. When libraries repin pins, they show that they are looking at other people’s pins, making a decision about their alignment with that person, and inviting them to check out the library’s pins. Repins are important in building a community.
fig 03 – the pin it button
Pinmarklet – A combination of the words Pinterest and Bookmarklet, the Pinmarklet is a javascript button that you copy to your bookmarks bar and click whenever you are on a site where you find something worth sharing. It greatly simplifies the pinning process compared to the “share pin” feature on the site itself. Libraries who use pinterest should consider adding the pinmarklet to staff computer images, so that they are encouraged to pin library related pins.
Comment – each pin on Pinterest has the ability for anyone to comment. By commenting, you effectively notify the pinner of your interest in the content, and give them the opportunity to begin a conversation with you. One can argue that the very point of social media in any form is to begin a discussion. If you pin a new acquisition and have it link through to your ILS, that’s an invitation to borrow that item. If you start a discussion to talk about why the media was acquired for your collection, you engage not only patrons and potential patrons, but also give the opportunity for a better understanding of why your library makes the choices it does.
Board – A board is the curation space on Pinterest, where you add, share, comment, and collaborate on pins. Your boards for your library should be essentially a visual version of your catalog, but also a business card, a note of thanks, a reminder of programming, and an insight into what your library really is, behind the buildings, people, and things in it.
Shared board – Boards can be co-curated by 2, 10, 100 or more pinners. You can invite other pinners that share the common interest of the board. The board’s creator may remove pinners at any time, or pinners can remove themselves. For libraries, shared boards are great opportunities. You could have a “patrons’ picks” board, in which only patrons post. You might carry a theme for the month, like “flying” or “government” and make boards that invite experts amongst your staff and patronage in those topics to pin what they know.
Follow – Pinners can follow boards that they like, with the key benefit being that they see new pins from those boards prioritized on their homepage. Pinners can choose to follow another pinners individual boards, or can follow the pinner wholesale. One can unfollow tiresome boards at any time. It is essential that you follow people with the library account. Following shows that you are not just interested in yourself, and also makes your home page far more interesting. When you follow people whose pins are related to yours, you see more of those kinds of pins when you open Pinterest.
Private Board – One innovation that Pinterest implemented in response to users was the ability to pin to a private board, which can also be a shared (collaborative) board. Their key example in explaining the function was to do party planning without the party’s purpose knowing about it, but many others cited that the prurient or otherwise controversial nature of some pins makes one less likely to repin them if others are watching. Private boards solve that issue. As a library, you might have private planning boards for upcoming events where you can collect pins related to the idea. Then when it is time to advertise the event, you can make the board public.
Like – One may like a pin rather than repin it, which adds it to a liked list, a kind of board in itself. Liked pins have all of the function and purpose of a pin or repin, but are useful especially in cases where the pin does not easily fit into your existing boards. You might like things that you do not necessarily want to associate with your library directly, e.g. an academic science library might want their boards to focus on science topics, but they might also ‘like’ pins about food. If the food is science related, even better.
Pinner – A user on the Pinterest system; one who pins. In creating an account for a Library, it is better if your personal Pinterest account is not used, so that you can separate your personal brand from the library brand. In fact, it is better to have a Library as a business account in Pinterest, so that you can get the added benefits of that mode (below).
Certified users and business accounts – you can associate yourself with a particular URL by going through an authentication process that allows you to gain statistical insights about pins from your web site. Libraries on Pinterest should consider this process since they may want to know if people are clicking on pins to visit their ILS for instance. Polaris, amongst other social media aware cataloging systems, allow for the pinning of assets by patrons right from the catalog if enabled.
I’m not one to be especially paranoid, generally speaking. In fact, I tend to think of myself as generally stable, pragmatic, and realistic. I go on what I sense. However, recently, I began thinking deeply about all the trails we are leaving, especially my own, and how easy it is to know the deeper part, the private part, of who I am, easily.
I am okay with this. After all, openness is part of my brand. However, if I had a camera on me, broadcasting everything I do and say, it would be difficult to watch sometimes. I’m flawed, I have an ego, I make mistakes, and I try my best to improve myself. I fail, often, and I am okay with that, but also, I like to think that my worst moments of anger or failure would be seen in the larger context of the good I try to do in the world.
I guess what I am trying to say is that we do have the equivalent of cameras on us all the time. I read the dystopian trilogy (Zamyatin’s We, Orwell’s 1984, and Huxley’s Brave New World) as a young man, and it had a great effect on me. I accepted that society has a big-brotherly effect on us, and I try to do my best to satisfy their needs, while being myself to the degree that anyone can within a society. I also try to resist the Soma of this world, embrace emotion in the face of a societal need for me to be less sensitive, and generally respect, but not unequivocally align with authoritative mandates.
So consider the reality of the ways in which we are tracked and followed, and know that those records and details might be used against you at some time in the future. If you know it, you can make better decisions in light of it, and avoid the potential issue with reasoning.
1. At any given time, no matter where you are, there is likely a reporting sensor that knows that you are there. Your phone is an example, but so are security cameras, fitbits, and computers.
2. The data stream of each of these devices is logged in some way, some more overtly, and others more overtly. I can look at the history of my browsing, steps, music listening, book reading, meetings, messages, and photos and video going back over 10 years. There are no gaps.
3. There is a technological movement being presented quite reasonably in the form of Robert Scoble’s Age of Context that focuses on Big Data (e.g. credit cards), Social Data (e.g. Facebook), the Internet of Things (e.g. tweeting fridges), and personal data logging (e.g. fitbit).
For more on this topic, please take a look at these slides that I prepared for a talk on sensors, personal data, and context.
I recently had the opportunity via LibraryLinkNJ to speak on the topic of Consumer Device Support in Libraries at several of their Tech Speed Dating gatherings, in which librarians from across the state of New Jersey come together to learn about the technologies they might love. It is a platform for dissemination of new technologies and best practices, but also potentially a place to introduce an idea. My idea: New library policy documents about the support for Consumer Devices in Libraries. Please take a look at this document, and use it as you wish, as it is Creative Commons – Attribution licensed. If you use it as is, you need do nothing. If you decide to change it, please mention that is was by John LeMasney via lemasney.com and thanks!
55 of 365 Coffee Mug by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
55 of 365 Coffee Mug by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
This is a three-dimensional coffee cup created in SketchUp, the Trimble-owned, free, three-dimensional modeling application. Given the increased importance of making and three-dimensional printing in contemporary libraries, I have decided to focus a bit on 3D modeling as an area to extend myself into. I taught a class on this for a full-day staff development session recently for the Long Island Library Resource Council (LILRC), a long-time friend of LeMasney Consulting. I think we discovered a few architects in the audience.
I fell in love with it when Google purchased it. The thing I love about it, despite also loving open source tools like Blender, is that it is incredibly easy to use and learn, comparatively. Honestly, after watching four short ‘getting started’ videos on http://sketchup.com, you’ll know enough to start building very complex shapes. A beautifully simple tool.
54 of 365 That thing gives me the creeps by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
54 of 365 That thing gives me the creeps by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
I was recently on a chat with a friend, and she explained that she really loved this breed of dog that has abundant wrinkles, very short legs, and clipped ears. The name of the breed escapes me, but my reaction was “that thing gives me the creeps”. I paused for a moment and thought about how odd that phrase is, which is usually a trigger for me to illustrate it. I pictured a 1970’s style treatment, dark, and playful.
In Inkscape, I placed the text, and applied the font Ballpark, a staple of my illustrations. I skewed the lines up and to the right. I duplicated and applied an outset to the duplicate, twice. Each time moving the outset shape backwards. I imported a lovely foggy image of red trees in summer morning, and used those colors for the palette.
I picture it being used in social media threads in which one person shares an image or idea that is full of creepiness, and someone shares my illustration as a response.
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