School Libraries and Pinterest

Pinterest is a great tool for the school library here are some idea on how you can make this social media tool work for you.

If you haven't already discovered it, Pinterest is an online bulletin board for your favourite images. You do need an to set up an account but you don’t need to use your real name and it’s perfectly possible to set up an account just for the school library (though it does need an email, Facebook or twitter account).

You ‘pin’ images onto ‘boards’ and you can have as many of these ‘boards’ as you want i.e. recommended reads, dark romance, homework help… Like any social media you can see and ‘follow’ what others have ‘pinned’ to their ‘boards’ and add comments. You can search the site by subject, topic or theme and look at ‘pins’, ‘boards’ and people.

Copyright issues have been flagged but Pinterest encourages ‘pinners’ to link directly to the source of their images and adhere to best practice. The main problems with copyright come from ‘repinning’ an option to ‘pin’ an image someone else has already ‘pinned’. It is worth double checking where they pulled the image from and making sure you link to the original source (you can also comment on their pin and add the right URL so they can fix their link).

I’m sure for those not technically minded that all seems like gobble-de-gook but it’s actually a very easy site to use and because it’s image based, very visual. So here are some ideas on how you can use Pinterest in the school library:

1.    Collect inspiration – for displays, programs, classes, costumes...

2.    Share reading lists.

3.    Share links to sites for classes/topics/ homework/ eBooks/ etc.

4.    Collaborate with other librarians, teachers, pupils and share ideas, recommendations. (You can add ‘contributors’ to the ‘boards’ so lots of people can add to that ‘board’)

Want more ideas? Take a look at Lee Loftland's list of 20 Great Ways Libraries are Using Pinterest for more suggestions and links to other library pinners.