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ISI 5121 Social Tagging - Pinterest
- 1. ISI 5121 W2012/13 Kelly Sirett Arouce Wasty Patrick McLean Sherin Emmanuel Social Tagging and More
- 2. (image: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/carpet-tiles-as-bulletin-board-77078) ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 3. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 4. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects Drives more traffic than... Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined 11 million registered users in <2 yrs one of the fastest growing websites 3rd most popular website in the US unique visitors (per month) Online Digital Scrapbooking Social Network
- 5. Users and Content ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects 80% of users are women Most popular subjects include Food & Drink, Home & Garden Décor and Design, and Apparel & Accessories Most users are between the age of 25 and 44
- 6. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 7. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 8. What is Tagging? - Creating keyword labels (tags) for digital information such as pictures, videos etc. (Baker, 2012) - Act of adding keywords to online resources (Ding et. al, 2009) - Process focused on the user choice of terminology (Trant, 2009) Characteristics of Tagging (from Lin et. al, 2009) - Closer to natural language than controlled vocabularies - Highlight specific contents or facts most interesting to the users - Terms do not carry equal weight ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 9. What is Social Tagging? - Practice of publicly labeling or categorizing resources in a shared, on-line environment (Trant, 2009) - Socio-technical context within which tagging takes place (Trant, 2009) - Adding tags within a social networking, or other shared user, environment From “Social Tagging with LibraryThing and Del.icio.us”. (2009) Special Libraries Association http://units.sla.org/chapter/cpit/events/handout_tagging_05.21.09.pdf ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects Not the same as social bookmarking - the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public Web site as a way to share the links with other Internet users (Dictionary.com, n.d.)
- 10. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 11. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects Characteristics of tagging systems - Relationship between users – critical element - No hierarchy, no directly specified term relationships - Many users may be allowed to tag the same item - Creates a system of taxonomy by users rather than experts - No pre-determined set of groups or labels to organize user’s tags
- 12. On Pinterest, this picture , tagged as “Matte black Lamborghini Murciélago”, is categorized under - I want one of those cars - Cool stuff I like - Cars (x 2) - Cars that are awesome - I am going to do this/be there one day - Garage - Boyfriend - george LCSH Subject Headings Lamborghini automobile (Not Subd Geog) BT Automobiles NT Miura automobile Urraco automobile ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 13. Pinterest Activity Library Service Create and name pinboard Taxonomy Development Assign pinboard to top level category Cataloging Select a website with images suitable for pinning Collection Development Select image to pin surrogate and representing pin item to pinboard and comment Indexing and abstracting (Michael Zarrow, Catherine Hall, Pinterest: Social collecting for linking using sharing, Drexel University, Philadelphia) IM practices within Pinterest: Library Services ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 14. • Pinterest focuses on keeping the threshold low to enable users to engage easily • Engage users and create communities without distraction from their primary goal of sharing and collaborating on images and video • Pinterest helps generate metadata (tags) at relatively low cost (University of Madison, Libraray student Journal, ISSN 1931-6100) • But not the metadata such as Title, Author, Publication etc. that we need for LIS • IM metadata considered a user burden • Pinterest cannot replace traditional cataloging and indexing • No effective means of using Library (Catalog) categories to link to Pinterest categories • can be used to complement them and engage users. Pinterest in the IM domain: Cataloging and Metadata ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 15. • Pinterest provides for the aggregation of opinions via comments and categories etc. • no standardization of tags • Descriptions can be from wildly differing perspectives • No tag rationalization so aggregation by Equivalent, Broader and Narrower terms (tags) are not feasible. • Vocabulary control needs centralized control and governance • not a part of the Pinterest culture or ethos. • all tags have equal value in a flat-faceted model • aggregating or categorizing similar collections on LIS terms are hard (No hierachies) • does not require any sort of text verification or controlled vocabulary so equivalent or identical images tagged differently are in separate categories. (e.g. the same dress tagged with Style and Fashion) The power in the system is always in the hands of the user Pinterest in the IM domain: Vocabulary Control and Aggregation ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 16. • Pinterest does not retain bibliographic information present with the original image • lacks the potential to keep reference information and citations stored in one place for access by others. • Tags can be used for reference but lack of tag standardization prevents this being effective • Pinterest does not leverage the possibilities of automatically adding pre- existing bibliographic metadata to pins • lost ability to provide reference management along with social collection. • Another IM/LIS centric practice sacrificed in the name of lowering the threshold for participants Pinterest in the IM domain: Reference Management and social bookmarking ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects (A case study – Connotea, Ben Lund, Tony Hammond, Martin Flack, Timo Hannay)
- 17. Once content is copied to the Pinterest site, the terms of use state that Pinterest will have the right to “sublicence” to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, licence, sell, transfeer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on , through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.(Pinterest Vs Ethics and the Law – Part 1, A guide for new Pinterest members, extracted from http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/news/campaign-news/pinterest-versus-ethics-and-the-law-%11-part- 1/Thursday, 15 March 2012 00:00) • In Pinterest, URLs retained when an image is originally pinned • can be deleted and images pinned or re-pinned without attribution • contravenes copyright of authors and creators. • Pinterest puts the onus on the creators to make their images un-pinnable via code. • This further prevents any form of interconnected referencing as in some other social tagging tools such as Connotea Pinterest in the IM domain: Copyright and ethics ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 18. • On Pinterest collections of bookmarks can be made accessible to others via RSS feeds • Not collections as we know them in LIS but user defined by tags • Bookmarks relating to particular topics and users can be “pushed” to others • Related content based on boards and tags can be used to direct users to content. • In IM terms, users could be shown messages that say “People who searched for this image also searched for….” enabling knowledge sharing • This aspect of Pinterest is being leveraged by organizations RSS feeds, re-naming of tags, recommendations ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 19. Does Pinterest have value as a subject retrieval tool? … the answer – a (very) qualified yes ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 20. • Pinterest is not well suited for total recall-type searches • Pinterest is useful for: • Browsing / serendipity • Sharing / suggesting • Highlighting novel linkages ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 21. • According to the Oxford Dictionaries (2013), to “curate” is to: “… select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition)” and “… select, organize, and present (suitable content, typically for online or computational use), using professional or expert knowledge” Curation vs. Social Curation (1 of 2) ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 22. Curation vs. Social Curation (2 of 2) • By contrast, Duh et al. (2012) define “Social Curation” as “… the human process of remixing social media contents for the purpose of further consumption” • Includes the following elements: • 1) Bundle content from different sources • 2) Re-organize them to give a personal perspective • 3) Publish the resulting story to consumers (Duh et. al. 2012, p. 447) (Hall and Zarro 2012, p. 2) ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 23. (Duh et. al. 2012, p. 448) ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects
- 24. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects http://pinterest.com/archerlibrary/ University of Regina Archer Library Page
- 25. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects http://pinterest.com/archerlibrary/education/ Archer Library “Education” Board
- 26. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects http://pinterest.com/pin/55169164157310577/ Archer Library “Pin”
- 27. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects http://pinterest.com/cadion/school-stuff-instructional-coaching-resources/ Archer Library Source “Re-pinned” to Another Board
- 28. ISI 5121 Win 2012/13 Pinterest Demo Characteristics Curation Conclusion IM Aspects Conclusion • Presents subjects visually • More traction, appeal and impact • Potential to increase user accessibility to information resources
Notas del editor
- Hello, my name is Kelly – this is Arouce, Patrick and Sherin and we are here to talk about Pinterest, Social Tagging and More! Pinterest is a social media platform that takes the concept of a pin board, or a bulletin board, and transfers it to the web.
- So, in other words this becomes…
- …this! We will be describing how Pinterest works shortly. But first, let’s talk a bit about why should we pay any attention to Pinterest? Other than the fact that we were assigned to do so.
- The website launched in March 2010 (Hansen, Nowlan & Winter, 2012). And, like Facebook, it was originally by invitation only, but is now completely open to the public without the need for an invitation from a current user. By January 2012, less than two years after its launch, Pinterest had more than 11 million registered users, making it one of the fastest growing websites (Hansen, Nowlan & Winter, 2012). The most recent statistics, from December 2012, state that there are now close to 30 million unique visitors to the site each month (Site Analytics, 2012). Pinterest is the third most popular website, behind Google and Facebook (Hall & Zaro, 2012). Pinterest “drives more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined” (Hansen, Nowlan & Winter, 2012). These are some pretty impressive stats!
- Next, I wanted to talk a bit about who is using Pinterest… The majority of users—with some studies reporting over 80 percent—are women (Stellrecht, 2012). Most users are in the age bracket of 25 to 44 years old (Hansen, Nowlan & Winter, 2012). Maybe not surprisingly, “the most popular subjects include Food & Drink, Home & Garden Décor and Design, and Apparel & Accessories” (Hall & Zaro, 2012).
- Now, I’d like to give you a brief demo of the website. What you see here is the Pinterest landing page. Each of these photos (or in some cases, videos) are what is a called a “pin”. Users, who are called “Pinners”, can add a brief (less than 500 character) description of the photo or video, then organize it by pinning it to one of their boards. Some popular pin board types include: recipes, crafts, and clothing. Users can “pin” content of their own (by uploading a photo or video). They can “pin” content from the web by downloading the “pin it” toolbar add-on (or some websites have a “pin it” button, which operates like the Facebook share button). Or users can re-pin content that another user has already pinned. As you can see at the top of the page, Pinterest has created a list of categories like Animals, Art, Food & Drink, and even Geek. Users can browse everything, select a category, or search. Like other social networking sites, users can follow the pins of others or can follow specific pin boards. One of the reasons some researchers have suggested that Pinterest is so popular is because it is a highly visual application. Pinterest is really attractive for visual learners, but also reflects the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words, or at least more than 500 characters! In an article in the Journal of Web Librarianship from October 2012, Lisa Carlucci Thomas points out that although text-based communications like text messages, tweets, Facebook status updates, and email are a major part of our daily lives, the details of these messages can be lost in the abundance of them. She argues that “an attractive, compelling image offers background, narrative, and conclusion all a moment’s glance, delivering information, efficiency, and satisfaction to the viewer” (Carlucci Thomas, 2012).
- Here you can see the “profile view”, where you’ll notice that I have five different pin boards, each containing a number of pins. Now, I’ll pass to Arouce, who will be discussing social tagging.
- Thank you Kelly! Now that you have learned a bit about Pinterest, I’m going to talk a bit about Tagging and Social Tagging in general. Only recently has there been any research done on tagging and social tagging, and research is continuing as we speak- as will be shown in the course of this presentation. Here are some definitions of tagging: Baker, in her article “Folksonomies and Social Tagging” defines tagging as Creating keyword labets for digital information such as pictures, videos etc. Ding et. al in their article “Perspectives on Social Tagging” defines tagging as an act of adding keywords to online resources Trant, in her article “Studying Social Tagging: a Review and Framework” defines tagging as a process focused on the user choice of terminology. Baker focuses more on tagging in terms of digital information, whereas Trant focuses more on the user aspect of tagging. If we think about it, tagging is more of a combination of these definitions, where users create or add keywords to digital or online resources. Here are some characteristics of tags, as extracted from a study done by Lin et. al. These researchers wanted to find out what is the difference in terms of content description between social classification and traditional indexing methods. From their results, they determined some characteristics of tagging, as highlighted here. Tagging was found to use terms that are closer to natural language than controlled vocabularies. This is pretty obvious as controlled vocabularies are created, selected and governed by professionals, whereas tags are used by regular people. Highlight specific content or facts most interesting to the user, as opposed to describing the entire content of the resource or picture Terms do not carry equal weight – as in, for a single item, some terms would be more popular to use than others. With controlled vocabularies, the terms are chosen and agreed upon as the term to use for a particular item or resource.
- Now we come to social tagging. In terms of definition, basically, social tagging goes a step further from tagging by providing an online, social, and often public, environment whereby users can tag items. The term ‘social tagging’ has been used interchangeably with social bookmarking, however, they are not the same. if we look at the definition of social bookmarking, we see that social bookmarking is more specific to sharing web pages, whereas social tagging involves all describing and classifying online content. A better synonym of social tagging is collaborative tagging.
- Here is a visual description of a social tagging system. People view resources, assign tags, and then share with other people, who assign more tags, and it continues.
- Here are some characteristics of tagging systems. As seen in the previous slide, relationships between users are absolutely important in keeping this system alive. There can’t be any social tagging without the ‘social’ aspect of it! Social tagging is a free-text system where a user can put whatever descriptor he or she wants without any specific regulations to follow Many users are allowed to tag the same item Creates a system of taxonomy by users rather than experts – this is important as a taxonomy created by users would use terms that are familiar to other users, thereby allowing for easier access to resources. No pre-determined set of groups or labels to organize user’s tags – a user can create his/her own category to place items and don’t have to or need to place their items in a pre-determined set of categories.
- Here is just an example of categorization in a social taggin system. In this case, I am looking at categorization in Pinterest. As Kelly had shown us earlier, Pinterest does have some pre-set categories, however, users can create boards which act as their own personal categorization system. This picture, tagged as Matte black Lamborghini Murciélago, and this one picture has been repinned 27 times. Here are some of the categories or boards that contain this picture. Ideally, this picture would be under the “Cars” category, which is present here, yet there are some unrelated categories such as “I am going to do this/be there one day”, “Boyfriend” and”george”. Just out of curiosity, I performed a search in Library of Congress Subject headings, using the term Lamborghini Murciélago. Interesting enough, The subject heading it took me to was Lamborghini Urraco automobile. Browsing backwards, I found this subject heading, which would be suitable for this picture, if categorized by information professionals. Another interesting observation is that in LCSH, the only Lamborghinis they have are the Urraco and the Miura. These two cars were made in the 70s and there have been many more Lamborghinis built since then. So social tagging also provides more up-to date information. Now I will pass t on to Sherin who will discuss more about Pinterest the social tagging system, using an information management lens.
- Since Pinterest is new, there are not too many studies done on it at this time, however we found some studies on Pinterest and others on other similar tools that demonstrated to us what is and could be done technologically with social media centric tools in general. This helped us identify what you could and could not do with Pinterest. Using this information we focussed our presentation on IM centric practices within Pinterest and then looked at Pinterest within the IM domain, especially with regard to subject retrieval. According to Michael Zarro and Catherine Hall of Drexel University, (Zarro, Michael, Hall, Catherine, Pinterest: Social Collecting for #linking #using #sharing, www.ischool.drexel.edu, http://www.mikezarro.com/docs/Zarro_JCDL2012_Poster.pdf) activity of users on Pinterest can be equated to several of the library services. Creating and naming a taxonomy they equate to developing a taxonomy because users create and categorize as one would in a taxonomy. Assigning boards to categories they equate to Cataloging as in Cataloging we assign information resources to an existing catalogue or scheme. As with collection development in a livbrary the authors claim that Pinterest users carefully select images and websites to showcase on their pin boards. Finally, they equate the acts of selecting and pinning like images and commenting on them as equivalent to indexing and abstracting.
- Pinterest like folksonomies represents a way to engage users, create online communities and generate metadata at relatively low cost (University of Madison, Libraray student Journal, ISSN 1931-6100) =============== Pinterest focuses on keeping the threshold low to enable users to engage easily Engage users and create communities without distraction from their primary goal of sharing and collaborating on images and video Pinterest helps generate metadata (tags) at relatively low cost (University of Madison, Libraray student Journal, ISSN 1931-6100) But not the metadata such as Title, Author, Publication etc. that we need for LIS IM metadata considered a user burden Pinterest cannot replace traditional cataloging and indexing No effective means of using Library categories to link to Pinterest categories can be used to complement them and engage users.
- In Pinterest the power in the system is always in the hands of the user Pinterest provides for the aggregation of opinions via comments and categories etc. users can re-name tags to coincide or match with others’ but there is no standardization of tags Diversity of opinions allowed is limitless so descriptions can be from wildly differing perspectives How do you identify a single description or subject for an image? Is an image with of a family standing in front of the Library of Congress pertain to the subject of the family, The LC, IM related buildings or….? All of which could be tags for the image on Pinterest. No tag rationalization so aggregation by Equivalent, Broader and Narrower terms (tags) are not feasible. Vocabulary control needs to be centralized and governed but these are not a part of the Pinterest culture or ethos. all tags have equal value in a flat-faceted model so aggregating or categorizing similar collections on LIS terms are hard Pinterest does not require any sort of text verification or controlled vocabulary so equivalent or identical images tagged differently are in separate categories. (e.g. the same dress tagged with Style and Fashion)
- Leave NEW description metadata aside….what about bibliographic information that is already present with some of the images and videos? Why not retain that and provide for others to use this reference information? Pinterest does not retain bibliographic information present with the original image and therefore lacks the potential to keep reference information and citations stored in one place for access by others. Pinterest does not leverage the possibilities of automatically adding bibliographic metadata to pins as done in tools like Connotea thereby losing the ability to provide reference management along with social collection. (Ben Lund, Tony Hammond, Martin Flack, Timo Hannay :A case study – Connotea,) Tags can be used to reference images but since there is no standardization for the tags and all tags have equal value in a flat-faceted model and similar collections are hard to aggregate
- Once content is copied to the Pinterest site, the terms of use state that Pinterest will have the right to “sublicence” to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, licence, sell, transfeer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on , through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.(Pinterest Vs Ethics and the Law – Part 1, A guide for new Pinterest members, extracted from http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/news/campaign-news/pinterest-versus-ethics-and-the-law-%11-part-1/Thursday, 15 March 2012 00:00) Pinterest puts the onus on copyright owners to ensure copyright is not infringed by placing a line of code on their websites such that images are not “pinnable” In Canada where everything on the web is considered to have copyright this becomes a problem….. In Pinterest, URLs retained when an image is originally pinned can be deleted and images pinned or re-pinned without attribution contravenes copyright of authors and creators. This further prevents any form of interconnected referencing as in some other social tagging tools such as Connotea
- On Pinterest collections of bookmarks can be made accessible to others via RSS feeds which enables sharing. This is where lists of bookmarks or bookmarklets (term used in social tagging) can be “pushed” to other users who may benefit from them based on their interests Related content based on boards and tags can be used to direct users to content. In IM terms users could be shown messages that say “People who searched for this image also searched for….” enabling knowledge sharing This aspect of Pinterest is being leveraged by organizations to direct users to content… Patrick will now tell you all about how Pinterest is being leveraged for this by many information organizations…
- So, given the shortcomings that Sherrin has just described, can we conclude that Pinterest has any value for subject retrieval? The answer is a very qualified yes.
- 1) Pinterest is not the right choice for total recall searching (i.e. finding all relevant documents on a given subject). The reasons for this were alluded to earlier: -There is no consistent metadata such as would be provided by controlled vocabularies or thesauri – in fact, there is often no meaningful metadata at all (think of an image without any comments, or one of the all-pervasive “so-cool” type comments). -The search function is weak (you can really only search in free text by board or by pinner – even then, you can’t search within a board except by using the browser’s ctrl-f function) -The interface favours things that are newly added. If you have a board with thousands of pins, the most recent is at the top and you have a daunting job of scrolling ahead if you want to see everything. 2) By facilitating browsing, sharing and reorganizing, however, Pinterest’s structure can help people find things in other ways – Most notably through serendipitous “aha” moments of discovery and by highlighting new, diverse or truly novel linkages between what might seem like unrelated items or themes. These possibilities arise because Pinterest emphasizes “social curation” as well as social tagging.
- As the definitions here suggest, a common traditional approach to curation involved experts, in a professional setting, who would select, organize and manage content – in essence, acting as middlemen between content creators and content consumers. A typical example would be a library or museum, where staff chose the books or items to acquire, the constrained metadata and subject headings used to describe what those items represent, and the setting in which users could access the material.
- By contrast, Duh et al. (2012) define “Social Curation” as “… the human process of remixing social media contents for the purpose of further consumption” The “social” in the term “social curation” indicates that we are dealing with the curation of “social media” content, but it also captures the notion that we are talking about a human element, and that the usual social media features (such as sharing, liking, commenting, etc.) are present (Hall and Zarro 2012, p. 2). That being said, the curator need not be a professional or expert per se. They can simply be an individual or group with a particular interest.
- So as you can see, we again have an instance of what is old being new again. Creators place their content online in various locations (in the case of Pinterest, we are talking about images and video). Someone with an interest in that content doesn’t just reference it, they collect copies of the images they find most relevant and repackage it to tell a new story based on a particular theme or subject. As stated by Hansen et al. (2012, p. 7), “The ability to organize pins onto boards means that the images themselves can [also] be just as meaningful as the linked content. The images can be used to provide an example, give visual clues or offer contrast.” Other users get to comment on the “story” being told. They may then also repackage the content on the basis of another theme or subject.
- That Pinterest has some value for retrieval is illustrated by the ways in traditional IM institutions (e.g. libraries) are leveraging Pinterest’s positive attributes to support their activities. In 2012, Elaine Thornton reviewed the Pinterest profiles of 57 American academic libraries. She found that the libraries were generally using the site to: Provide general information (a sort of online bulletin board showing buildings, staff, etc.) Upload digital archives (so that photos mouldering in the basement can find new life) Showcase library resources Of these, the latter was the most common. An example from the University of Regina’s Archer Library is shown here. What is interesting is that these libraries are using Pinterest to drive interest in their holdings and visitors to their websites, but also to provide information about their holdings which would not be captured by the traditional catalogue (a sort of catalogue supplement). For example, many library sites will include boards such as “books written by local authors” or “books requested by faculty”. Because Pinterest is cheap, easy to use and popular, the library can highlight these different aspects of the resource. In their role as social curators, the library staff can also add other images or videos that help to contextualize their resources. For instance, an architecture board could include books about architecture, but also pictures of architecturally distinctive structures, and pictures of architecture professors.
- In the case of the Archer Library, separate boards have been created for library information, subjects of general interest (e.g. “what are we reading”), and also for each of the broad educational domains taught at the school. Here we have the “Education” board.
- Users can select one of the resources (here we have “Navigating Cultural Competence”). Clicking on the book will bring the user to the corresponding Archer Library catalogue record, which tells us it is about teaching a multi-cultural group of kids. While this is pretty straightforward and useful, the added functionality lies in what Hall and Zarrow (2012) have described as the ability of other Social Curators to selectively collect content based on their own opinions and judgements, to create new categories that are ‘perspective or context dependent.” In our example here, the book was repinned by Cindy Hokenson to a board called “School Stuff – Instructional Coaching Resources”.
- In following through to this next board, a visitor is exposed to other resources touching not only on cultural education, but also on all manner of related content, such as teaching grants, checklists, reading resources, sample classroom activities, etc. Ms. Hokenson, as a new curator, has copied the same resource to a different context. In so doing, she has linked it to other resources in ways that may be both novel and instructive to other users.
- When subjects are presented visually to users—like they are on Pinterest—they have more traction, appeal, and impact. Although Pinterest does not follow traditional norms of information management practices, it has the potential to lend itself to increasing user accessibility to information resources.