Summary of CODES Conversation: Tweeting, Tumbling, & Pinning: Using Social Media for RA

Back in April I announced that the newest RUSA CODES Conversation would be happening May 12-13.

These are free conversations open to anyone, member or not, who is interested in participating in an email conversation about "the rapidly changing landscape of collection development, readers' advisory, and publishing." I will be frank, this two day blitz produces a lot of email in your inbox. But if you use a filter to send them all to one folder and catch up and/or participate when you have time, it is totally worth it to sign up.  You can put yourself on the list to always be included whenever a new conversation begins by clicking here.

This time, the discussion centered around using social media for RA. It was very informative and people shared quite a bit.  Thankfully for all of you out there, since I was signed up, I received the excellent 33 page summary from my friend, CODES conversation organizer, and just overall librarian extraordinaire, Neal Wyatt.

I have uploaded it to a shared document that you can access here.

What this document does is gather the many threads and simultaneous conversations that were going on and puts them into one, organized document broken down by category with all of the links and resources that were mentioned grouped into a cohesive order.

It's awesome.

In my opinion, this was one of the most useful conversations we have had, and this summary will help a lot of people [myself included]. Please take some time to look it over and consider signing up for future conversations.  It's free.

Have a great holiday weekend.  RA for All is back on Tuesday.

ARRT Pinterest

Today is beautiful and I am off work, so I am going to plant my flowers.  Today’s post, therefore, will be quick but useful.  As promised yesterday, ARRT Pinterest guru, Emily (@LibCatEmeB) has crafted a wonderful Pinterest presence for ARRT.  You can find all of the boards here.

True to our mission of “Developing Readers Advisory skills and promoting reading for pleasure through public libraries in the Chicago metropolitan area, the boards are a mixture of training resources, book lists, and book news.

To help get people interested in our new Pinterest venture, we are collected your favorite, sure bet discussion books and have created a board with them all here.  But the great thing about social media is, the list is never done.  Please feel free to pin more titles, tweet your favs using the hashtag #arrtreads, or leave them on the ARRT Facebook page. You can even leave them in the comments on this blog and I will get them to Emily.

In fact, I will add 2 more right now [with links to my discussion notes]:

The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
Still Alice by Lisa Genova

But more generally, as we saw in yesterday’s presentation, specific book discussion groups take on their own unique personality over time.  There is no one correct way to run the perfect book group.  Rather, a crowd-sourced collection of ideas, leadership styles, and tips creates a wonderful resource for book club leaders where they can access, and then try out, multiple techniques until they find the best combination for their group at that time. 

So add to the list of books that other leaders felt worked well for their book clubs.  Hey, maybe your group can test run these titles and see how they work.  It would be an easy way for you to narrow down a possible list of discussion books, since we are crowd-sourcing a sure bet list for you.  But that is what we do over at ARRT, try to help making working with leisure readers easier for you and a better experience for your patrons.

Finally, a note about Pinterest.  While I was at Skokie PL yesterday, I saw my former student Ally, who wrote this great post for me on how to get started on Pinterest.  Just in case you need a refresher.

Bridging the Physical Virtual Divide

This is an update of a post I have done in the past here.  But since that time (June 2011),  bridging the physical virtual divide has become my new mission.  I have even added it to my 10 Rules of Basic RA Service.  And, I add at least a mention of it in every talk I give.

In fact, today, I will be at Reaching Forward presenting this talk. So here is update to that original post which I prepared for today's audience.

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Promoting books in the virtual world is a tricky proposition.  On the one hand, you want to exploit the 2.0 tools of blogs, wikis, and social media to reach more readers, but on the other hand, you do not want to forget about your core brick and mortar customers.

When I co-created the RA department at the BPL in 2000 our goal was to put a spotlight on leisure readers and give them a desk where their needs could be met…and exceeded!  From the start, in our promotion of books to leisure readers, we have made a conscious effort to create a link between our physical and virtual services.

The first step is to think of your virtual work with leisure readers as the other side of the SAME coin you are already using to help the readers who come into your building.  This symbiotic rather than exclusionary relationship is what drives everything we do at the BPL RA desk.  Our goal is to get our patrons to use both services; in fact, we want one to drive them to use the other.  We have built a following in the building and one online, but because we have consciously worked to link the two experiences and make them equally as engaging and interesting, we now have patrons using the physical and virtual services interchangeably.  They have a seamless library experience across every platform.

The key to building this bridge is to look at every thing you do and ask yourself this question-- Am I keeping the focus on the book?

By book, I don't only mean a physical book.  I mean the reading experience, whether in a paper volume, through audio, or in an "e" format. 

Every time you try a new technology, use a new social media, or start a new program in your RA focused work, you need to remember that it all has to circle back around to finding your patrons their next good read.  As a result, at the BPL, we only incorporate virtual services that meet this standard.

One last comment that I need to stress.  The one thing the library has in stock that bookstores do not is the backlist.  We try to focus a large portion of our book promotion on the backlist.  That gem of the library; the thousands of great reads just waiting on the shelf to be matched with just the right reader.  For more on my strong feelings about promoting the backlist, click here.

Here are some of the ways we bridge the physical virtual divide at the Berwyn Public Library.

•  Social Media for Books and Readers:  Shelfari

• My Shelf
• BPL Staff Shelf on Shelfariand on the main website
• Patron Shelf

• Displays: In the Library and Online...and in perpetuity.

• Blog: RA for ALL
• Monday Discussion
• Book Discussions
• Reviews of books we own specifically geared toward who it would appeal to most, with readalike options, just like you would give at the desk,

• Facebook and Twitter

• Book Chats
• Promote leisure reading events

And the example we are most proud of-- the one which embodies everything we are striving to do as we bridge the physical--virtual divide... 

• The Browsers Corner: Books People Like at the Berwyn Public Library (BPL at the BPL)
• Physical Corner (see right) with staff suggestions and reading lists, flyers for book clubs, lists of award winners, and resources.
• Virtual Corner online with same content.  But you can also, Reading Maps and the notes from our popular Book Lovers Club. 
• It is a one stop shop for patrons, both those who walk through our doors and those who access us virtually.
• And coming soon to the Browsers Corner...Pinterest

Trending: Pinterest

One of my students, Ally, decided to try out Pinterest for her final project.  She focused on how to use the popular new social media site with a RA focus.

Before I go further though, I do want to include Ally's intro into what Pinterest is and her glossary of key terms:

"Pinterest is a visual-based social networking site. ...Users can “pin” images of things that interest them to different boards that they create. They can also “browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things,” and repin, like, and comment on pins posted by other users.  ...here are some terms to know:

Pin: “an image added to Pinterest. A pin can be added from a website using the Pin It button, or you can upload images from your computer.  Each pin added using the Pin It button links back to the site it came from” (Pinterest).  For readers’ advisors, a pin will be the book cover which links back to the catalog page. You can also pin videos, such as book trailers, to Pinterest.  Just be sure to give credit where credit is due.

“Pin It” button: “Once installed in your browser, the ‘Pin It’ button lets you grab an image from any website and add it to one of your pinboards.  When you pin from a website, we automatically grab the source link so we can credit the original creator” (Pinterest). Not only does installing this function to your web browser make pinning easier and more efficient, but it also helps funnel the users into the library’s website by linking to the title’s catalog page. 

Board: “a board is a set of pins.  A board can be created on any topic...You can add as many pins to a board as you want” (Pinterest). For readers’ advisory purposes, a board is what contains the titles in a book display or readalike list.

Following All: This “means you’ll have all of a user’s pins on all their boards shown to you in real-time on Pinterest. If the user makes new boards, you will automatically follow them.  You can follow individual boards if you’re only interested in seeing a user’s pins to specific boards” (Pinterest).  Users who follow the Library’s Pinterest boards will see the library’s pins in real timewhen they view the “Pinners you follow” screen in their account. They can view all of the library’s boards and pins by opening the library’s Pinterest page.

Feed: Runs in real time, meaning that as soon as you pin an image, it will instantly appear in your followers’ feed.   

So there's a primer on Pinterest.  After studying and using the site, Ally realized it could be used in much the same way as a librarian would create and use a display. She chose books for her boards using the same tools she would have used to create a physical display.  Then instead of filling physical shelves of a display case, she pinned the covers of books to her virtual board.  Each cover links back to the library's catalog.

On Pinterest you are allowed 500 words to annotate each pin.  Ally chose to use an edited version of the NoveList description of each book (with credit to them) to promote the fact that patrons could use the database for themselves too and then added in some appeal terms to help a reader decide is the book is right for them.

Her conclusion about the process:

Pinterest is new, fun, addicting, and being used by millions of people.  Will it be the be all/end all of readers’ advisory tools on the web? Probably not, but for now it is a viable way to connect our patrons with books.  The key point to remember in using Pinterest as a readers’ advisory tool is to keep books at the center. Make sure there is a brief description of the title as well as appeal terms that our patrons can easily understand.  Also, make sure the pins link back to the catalog;  By linking back to the catalog, we make it easier for the patron to get a hold of a title that piques their interest (and helps increase our circulation!).   Happy Pinning!

Here is the link to Ally's Pinterest boards to see for yourself.


Ally's work here illustrates one of my favorite things about teaching library students.  They are always looking into the newest trends and teaching me about different ways of looking at the things I have been doing every day for 12 years.

I had already planned to survey Pinterest this summer and figure out how we could incorporate it into our work at the BPL.  As you know, I am a huge proponent of providing equitable RA service to both the physical and virtual library users.  So, I always evaluate new technology based on this ideal.  After reading Ally's paper, I realized that Pinterest fits into our work at the BPL seamlessly.

We already post our annotated lists for our current physical displays on our website here, and then archive them after the display comes down here.  But, a Pinterest board might be a better way to bridge the physical-virtual divide than what we are currently doing.  We could pin the covers of the books from our annotated lists and then use the annotations someone already wrote to make a virtual mini-display.  We have already done the work as a staff, pinning the board is simply a matter of cutting and pasting.

In other words, in a matter of 10 minutes I can take the work we are already doing and make it stand out more.  I have added very little extra work and I am still keeping the focus on finding my patron their next good read. This is great!

Thanks Ally.  This summer, I will be adding a Pinterest component to the other great work we are doing to bridge the physical virtual divide over at the Browsers Corner.  I can't wait to get started.

For more on my mantra of bridging the physical-virtual divide, please see my Ten Rules of Basic RA Service.

And for more Trending posts, click here to access the archive.