Interview-Steenbock Memorial Library, Pinterest

I interviewed a reference librarian at Steenbock Memorial Library about their use of Pinterest on April 3, 2014. Steenbock Memorial Library is an academic library at UW Madison. About a year ago, they created their own Pinterest account separate from the UW Madison Libraries Pinterest page. You can take a look at Steenbock's Pinterest page here.

I focused on Steenbock for this interview because they have a specific purpose for their Pinterest page. Pinterest provides them a way to highlight books in their collection. Typically they will select a theme, sometimes related to upcoming events, and then create pins of books in the collection. This allows them to create a visual representation of their main collection through social media. They do not focus on attracting followers or interacting with other Pinterest users, but use it to create content to share on Facebook and Twitter.

Other interesting points from my interview include:

• Two reference librarians at Steenbock currently share the burden of updating and maintaining social media sites. They spend at least an hour each day to keep up with it.
• In addition to using Pinterest to create content for their Facebook and Twitter accounts, they also use Vine and Instagram.
• As an academic library, the typical Pinterest user is not representative of Steenbock's patrons. Therefore, it makes sense to focus social media efforts on other platforms.

Overall, the reference librarian I spoke with was optimistic about Steenbock's involvement in Pinterest. While they are less active on Pinterest than other accounts, the extremely visual website fulfills a need for the library to display their collection online in a pleasing, attractive way. They plan to continue using Pinterest as a content creator.