Pinterest: 2014 CMCIG Spring Workshop

The ALAO CMCIG Spring Workshop is scheduled for Friday, April 4th. I'm excited to have been asked to participate in one of the scheduled sessions: Marketing CMC’s and Library Resources Using Pinterest. During the session I plan to discuss a variety of board types currently featured on the IRC Pinterest site that may be developed, such as:

• Curriculum Resources: Ellison dies, materials kits,  and activity books
• Assignment Support:  Cumulative tales, alphabet books, and counting books
• IRC Activities:  Mock Caldecott Panels
• Rotating Holiday Boards:  Spring, National Library Week, Poetry Month
• IRC Course Support:  LibGuides, IRC QR Codes, and Voki Tours
• Teacher Resources: Classrooms, Common Core, Infographics
• AU Library & IRC: Digital Sign, AU Library, and The IRC
• Just for Fun: Book Trailers and Library Memes

Pinterest is easily personalized, curriculum materials centers - and libraries - are able to quickly create content specific to the intended audience. What works for my IRC Pinterest site, may not be suited for another library.  Of particular interest is the availability of widgets allowing me to incorporate Pinterest boards into existing resources such as web sites, blogs, twitter, and LibGuides.

Pinterest's recent inclusion of animated gifs to their pinnable resources has helped to move the site beyond simple images and video. I have not yet created an gifs, but continue to explore ways to develop video resources such as Animoto and recently the app Tellagami.

I am really looking forward to learning about what other CMCs are doing with Pinterest.