Tag Archives: pinterest

Mar 30

Lessons from the Campaign Trail

This week I’ve been engrossed in the Syracuse University iSchool’s Pinterest contest on the ‘Future of Librarianship’. I entered last week on a whim with the promise of a free book for the winner (The Atlas of New Librarianship by Dave Lankes), but the competitor in me kicked in when I found out I was a finalist. Since then I’ve been consumed with the contest and I’ve learned a few things along the way, related in the form of cliche.


It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. 

Once you get to the voting stage of something like this, merit goes out the window and it becomes a popularity contest. Whoever has the most friends wins, and that’s true in the professional world as well. I’ve been job hunting for a while now, and the jobs I get  interviewed for are overwhelmingly the ones for which I have a connection at the library. That being said, I’m horrible at ‘networking’ – I feel like my intentions are transparent and I’m not sure what to saywhen I’m trying to stay in touch – “Hi, it’s Kaylin, I’m still alive! What about you? Cool. Let’s do this again in a few months, okay?” If nothing else, this contest has given me an opportunity to reconnect with old coworkers and friends.

Don’t burn your bridges behind you.

This is an obvious lesson professionally, but I never applied it to friends before. A year ago I decided to ‘weed’ the people on my Facebook page that I’ve lost touch with, thinking that if I haven’t talked to them since high school I had no need to read their status updates. It wasn’t a bad move generally speaking, but you never know when a long-lost friend or even an acquaintance can help you out. This isn’t to say I would keep every person I’ve ever connected with on Facebook just to win a contest, but maybe there are a few who bear revisiting.

Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.

Last night I was telling Evan about how I was in first place all day Wednesday and had contacted quite a few people to ask for votes, and he cut me off by asking, “all this for a book?” Okay, yes the prize is a book (one I’m looking forward to reading whether or not I win), but the greater prize is reinvigoration and involvement in my field after identifying as a cake decorator more than a librarian for so long. I also met some cool new librarians and added their blogs to my RSS feed.

Stick to your guns.

About midway through the contest, I decided to use my resources in a different way and ask a friend who regularly handles event promotions to give me some advice. “You can’t force people to get excited but you can make them aware,” he said, adding that I should make sure people feel my enthusiasm, hammer home my message, and stick to my guns. That reminder was invaluable, since I often fall into the trap of formality at the expense of passion and personality when I’m presenting myself professionally.

Find out who your friends are.

I had a couple of surprises in the course of the contest as well. One of my undergraduate professors voted for me, then asked if she could post a link to the contest on her Facebook page and share it around the English department – it was above and beyond what I hoped for, and I was glad to have her in my corner. I found the same enthusiasm in a current coworker, and it’s nice to be reminded who has your back.

All in all it was a rewarding but exhausting week and the results will be published on the iSchool’s blog on Monday.

Mar 15

Pinterest and the Librarian

If there’s one thing to say about Pinterest, it’s that you can, and will, lose yourself there. I logged on a little while ago to do a bit of quick research to see how librarians and libraries are using the site, and here I am two hours, dozens of pin boards, and several articles later. When I signed up a month ago, I was not initially sold on Pinterest’s appeal, but obviously there’s something to it.

It’s fun! It’s current! It’s all about me and the stuff that I like, but with the option to share and discuss with my friends! It’s social media-y!

The personal side of it held my interest briefly until I realized I’m a lethargic Facebook user, I closed my Twitter account due to neglect, and I just don’t need another social media site to talk to my friends on. That’s how I decided to look into the ways the library field uses Pinterest – because you know if there’s a hip new thing on the internet, librarians are all over it, adapting and innovating. Not surprisingly, I found some pretty cool uses!

Of institutions utilizing Pinterest (which I limited to Ohio-area libraries because there are already many!), I noticed a lot of recommended reading boards with links to the online catalog, a few boards featuring special collections to explore, and other event-specific boards. Geauga West Library has a couple of entertaining boards devoted to library humor and crafts, and I was especially excited to see Ashtabula Library‘s ‘Books the Library Should Purchase’ board, where patrons can pin suggestions. Only one book has been suggested so far, but as Pinterest awareness/membership grows I can see it becoming a popular board. As a patron, I would much rather go to Pinterest and make a suggestion with a simple ctrl+c, ctrl+v than try to navigate a library website I may not be familiar with and find a place for suggestions there.

As far as individual librarians go, Pinterest seems to be a place to intermingle professional and personal interests. Most of the librarians I found had the standard boards for fashion, travel and recipes in addition to reading lists, library-related art, crafts, unique bookshelf photos, and more. RetroLibrarian has a board of, you guessed it, retro photos of librarians, and GothLibrarian has a board devoted to the ‘corporate goth wardrobe’ in case you don’t want to leave your personal style at home but are still concerned with a professional appearance. Kelly Butcher has all sorts of library-related boards including the off-color ‘Swear Like a Librarian’ and Joe Murphy uses a travel board to plan future trips.

Pinterest certainly brings new things onto the personal horizon (for instance I never would have considered its use as a job search tool), and it can also be a good way to meet people with similar interests. Today I found several librarian blogs I may never have seen had the authors not also been on Pinterest. Anyway, enough for now, although I’m sure I’ll come back to Pinterest as a topic – after all, it’s being called the hottest website of 2012.