Sunday, December 2, 2012

Pinterest Basics



Presented by Melissa Dragoo, Youth Services Librarian, Hamilton East Public Library

Find the Power Point from this presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/melissadragoo/pinterest-basics-15176828
Pinterest is an electronic pin board that allows you to organize what you find on the Internet, pin them, and organize them by topic. With Pinterest you can advertise what the library is doing—you can organize pins by  collections organized by category or craft ideas, for example. Many people (and libraries) use Pinterest to post ideas and organize them and to store ideas for future projects. You can also use Pinterest as a way to promote your library.
Pinterest was founded in 2010. It is used personally and by businesses. Users can follow people and they can follow you.
The mission of Pinterest describes what it does:
Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people. With millions of new pins added every week, Pinterest is connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests.

Sign up for free: www.pinterest.com.
Sign up with an email address, not Facebook. Your user name will be your url and your account name will be displayed on your Pinterest page. When setting up a library account, use the following example:
Choosing your Username and Account Name
Example: Generic Public Library
Account Name:
First Name: Generic; Last Name: Public Library
 Once you have set up your account, follow five boards. Then create your first board. Leave social networks off.
To unfollow a board, click on the unfollow button. You can also choose to follow only one category on a board. You can also pin people or libraries to follow. Look for pinners and then click ‘follow’. Borrow from the best and add it to your board. You can also pin ideas from websites. Consider categories for your board, such as favorite books.  Consider an interactive board—“What are you reading?” Create a page for the town and answer questions about the town’s history. American Libraries Magazine has interactive pins.
If you click your add button, you can choose ‘add a pin’, Then you will type in a website address. Pinterest will search for images you can pin. If your library has a blog, this is a great way to add original content of what you are doing at your library as well as promoting your organization
Doing
If you have an upcoming program, you can promote it via Pinterest.
 You can also link to your program sign-up pages.
Show library information on your board. Include specific programs you’re doing and other pins that fit the theme.
Show an awards board, such as Newbery or Pulitzer. The presenter suggested that one of the best ways for libraries to use Pinterest is to create visual bibliographies.  For example,  pin all of the Newbery books,  include a brief summary and the year it won. Visually, this type of pin is incredibly appealing. You can link it back to our catalog. If your catalog doesn’t include images, you can upload your own image and link it to your catalog that way.
 Use good keywords for your pins—that is how others find your pin. Promote buttons so that the pins link to your webpage.

You can’t move pins around. They appear in chronological order.
 Set up a policy for the use of Pinterest by your library.
                Guidelines
                Number of pins per week
                Decide which staff members will be responsible.
                Decide whether or not non staff may pin.
                Determine the staff member responsible for monitoring the library’s  Pinterest page.
                Add Pinterest policies to the library’s social media policies.

There was great concern  early this year that all Pinterest content was in violation of copyright terms.

A "nopin" HTML meta tag was released by Pinterest on 20 February 2012 to allow websites to opt out of their images being pinned. On 24 February 2012, Flickr implemented the code to allow users to opt out their photos.
Pinterest released a statement in March 2012 saying it believed it was protected by the DMCA's safe harbor provisions.  No major copyright lawsuits have emerged as of March 2012.
In early May 2012, the site added automatic attribution of authors on images originating from Flickr, BehanceYouTube and Vimeo. Automatic attribution was also added for Pins from sites mirroring content on Flickr. At the same time Flickr added a Pin shortcut to its share option menu to users who have not opted out of sharing their images.
In March 2012, Pinterest unveiled updated terms of service that ended the site's claims of ownership once implemented in April. "Selling content was never our intention", said the company in a blog post.

 To be safe about copyright, type the original description. If you are pinning images, use  advanced searches and filter for usage rights.
The burden is on the infringed party to notify you to remove an item.

Library Pinterest Pages of Interest:

http://pinterest.com/nypl                
http://pinterest.com/fwlys
http://pinterest.com/heplys (presenter’s library's account)

Useful articles:
http://davidliiking.com/

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