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We have all done it, gone down the Pinterest rabbit hole collecting resources and images in order to feel more organised about ourselves. Beuatiful visual curations 400 images long in 30 different pinterest boards likely to never touched again – what do we actually do with them when we are done? Who is curating our online museums in a mish mash of recipes, hair ideas and interior decorating?
” Hello, my name is Allissia Facey – and I am a Pinterest Addict”
I love the visual curation. My ADHD mind loves that it can quickly get a shot of dopamine by very quickly curating a stunning visual smorgasbord of school resources. I have used pinterest and its likes for years – visual curation tools are invaluable in my professional life as well. Visual curation tools are invaluable resources to me as a librarian, however, the more time I spend curating these boards, the more I begin to notice some of the issues – especially within a professional context.
Curation tolls ( Educase 2012) make it easy to collect and post disparate bits of content, provide visual groupings at a glance ( they also make it very easy to procrastinate). this is great if you are using portable technologies but many people do not consider issues using these tools such as privacy and the use of copyright. Many of the images on these site are “stolen from other sites and very rarely does the link take you to the original source. The time taken and needed to ensure that appropriate dues are given in these types of sites can be all encompassing not mention the management issues involved ( some of these pinterest boards have been around for many years and have 100’s of images – many of which include broken link, frustrating from a usability perspective).
Tastes and technologies change, that pin you placed years ago may no longer be relevant to the here and now. It almost feels like curation tools like pinterest feel like “one big two dollar shop of information” with nothing very substantial unless you really dive deep – which kinda defeats the purpose.
Online curation tools such as pinterest allow students to collaborate and be inspired – but Privacy issues are not usually taken into account. Many of these sites have little or no privacy controls, pinterest receiving a low score via tosdr.org
Using Pinterest for library curation? I dont know. Being a DOE school, outside sites like this are discouraged and I;m pretty Pinterest is blocked (EDIT: I checked using internet filtering, it is blocked for all except teachers and seniors) being attached to a lock down system like Oliver would make it hard to curate a visual system using our own physical collection – but that not the point is it, the idea is to organise and curate online content – not our library books.
Educause. (2012). 7 things you should know about social content curation
2021. [online] Available at: <https://tosdr.org/en/service/175> [Accessed 16 March 2021].
