Pinterest in the Library

It started so innocently. My sister-in-law was expecting and I was looking for a pattern to make a baby blanket. A fellow librarian told me to check out Pinterest and I would surely find one. I did. I also found all sorts of wonderful recipes, classroom ideas, cute shoes, oh-so-clever cartoons, decorating ideas, and photos of just about everything. The assortment of ideas was mind-boggling and I quickly lost all sense of time whenever I logged in. I felt a little guilty, spending so much time online pinning links to sites I may or may not ever have the time to peruse. This is when School Library Journal rode in to assuage my guilt and give direction to my Pinterest fascination.




The July issue of SLJ had a wonderful article by Kate Messner on how libraries and librarians are using Pinterest to promote books, reading and resources (Very Pinteresting! The hot social network is taking educators by storm). In the article, Messner discusses various ways in which librarians are using Pinterest to connect with their students. The article includes links to Pinterest pages set up by both public and school librarians, several other articles offering helpful tips on navigating Pinterest and ideas for using Pinterest in the library.




Thus inspired, I have begun compiling a Pinterest page for my media center. I found a workaround for pinning content with no suitable graphic - find the appropriate graphic, pin it, then go to the edit feature and paste in the URL you would like to link to - and I have a basic page ready for the first week of school. I'll be adding content regularly and found out that I could allow teachers with Pinterest accounts the ability to pin on the boards for their content area, a more immediate way to update information links than having them send me the links to add.




Feel free to check out the beginnings of our page - Lockerman Library .

 Happy Pinning!