Many colleges and universities have more than one library on campus or have specialized departments designed to meet the needs of a select group of students, faculty, and staff. Earlier, this month, this blog brought you 10 Ways to Use Pinterest at Your Academic Library, which suggested ideas for any academic library on how they might use Pinterest. Now, let's see how special collections, archives, digital collections, and subject specific libraries are customizing Pinterest on their college campuses.

Special Collections and University Archives

College History

• Staley Library, Millikin University (Decatur, IL)

Discover part of Millikin University's forgotten history by visiting their exhibits on dance cards or the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.)

• Ohio University Digital Initiatives, Ohio University (Athens, OH)

One of most creative ways to use Pinterest focuses on the first female graduate of Ohio University, Maggie Boyd. This university has tied its social media together through Pinterest by creating a board entitled Maggie Boyd's 1873 World. There is digitized copy of her diary, which is tweeted daily on Twitter. In addition, students and faculty write blog posts examining what life was really like during the Victorian era at Ohio University and are also shared on library's Facebook page.

Campus Publications

College newspapers and yearbook as providing a snapshot of what life was like for students, and many university archives and special collections are digitizing them for both accessibility and preservation. This college also has handbooks, catalogs, and alumni magazines in its digital repository.

• Jane Bancroft Cook Library, New College of Florida and the USF Sarasota-Manatee

College Artifacts

• Bluffton University (Bluffton, OH)

Check out their Beanies and Time Capsule Covers from classes of the past!

School Spirit

• Baylor University Libraries (Waco, TX)

Imagine if this board went retro with items from the university archives.

• Drake University (Des Moines, IA)

Using a Pinterest collaborative board, Drake University asks alumni to Pin Their Pride with each pin being representative of something that sparks pride in their university.

Introduce People to Archival and Preservation Profession

• What Do Our Archivists Do? Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)
• What Does An Archivist Do?

Several archivists put together this collaborative board to bring awareness to the importance of preservation.

Digital Collections

Generate interest in your digital collections by placing images on Pinterest. Here are a few digital collections featuring plants and insects.

• Nature
  • Butler University (Indianapolis, IN)
  • University of Wisconsin Digital Collections (Madison, WI)
  • Digitalization Services, University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA)

Let people know what valuable manuscripts you have at your repository and encourage them to visit.

• Manuscripts
  • Villanova University (Villanova, PA)
  • Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)

Get a glimpse into their vast Public Policy collection! This library also posts their rare books and special collection copyright policy on their Pinterest boards.

Crowd Sourcing Project

Crowd sourcing is a buzz word as libraries and institutions are having the public describe or transcribe images in digital collections. The New York Public Library has had great success using crowd sourcing to describe its digitized menu collection. The University of Alabama is trying out crowd sourcing with photographs and is using Pinterest as one way to promote it.

• W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, The University of Alabama

Specialized Departments or Subject Specific Libraries

Individual Boards for Each Library

• Baylor University Libraries (Waco, TX)

Baylor University gives each of its libraries have its own board. The benefit of this strategy is with one click of the "Follow All" button you can follow all the libraries at once. However, it does not allow individual libraries to organize their content by placing different topics onto different boards as a means of organization.

Individual Pinterest Accounts for Different Libraries on Campus

• Center for Transportation Research Library, University of Texas Austin (Austin, TX)
• Life Science Library, University of Texas Austin (Austin, TX)

By having separate Pinterest accounts, it allows these libraries to have subject specific boards showing the resources they have. Both libraries follow each other and share content back and forth that is relevant to the entire campus.

Music

• Music Library and Sound Recording Archives, Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, KY)

This library has Historic Sound Equipment, Musician Mug Shots, and Projects for Stuff in the Free Record Bins boards on Pinterest. One of the favorite events this library hosts is Sleevefacing, which is when a person obscures part of their body using a record sleeve to create an illusion.

Education

• Instructional Resource Center, Ashland University (Ashland, OH)

This department supports Ashland University's Collection of Education and helps its future teachers maximize the resources in the library. It has boards devoted to notable new children's books, elections resources, and much more. The IRC puts up images of the Ellison die cuts it has in the library, which helps their education students plan and design bulletin boards for the classroom.

Design

• Cornell Design Library [dLib], (Ithaca, NY)

Students from Cornell University's Department of Design and Environmental Analysis design and manage this library and use Pinterest to let their fellow students know what is available at the design library and to provide inspiration.

Law

• Mabie Law Library, University of California Davis (Davis, California)

These law librarians use Pinterest to link to various legal documents and publications their students use and provide finding aids to guide them in using legal resources.

These ideas originated from a collaborative video on Pinterest created in Wayne State University's LIS 6080 Information Technology on library's use of Web 2.0 technologies by libraries. Next week, this blog will look at how special libraries are using Pinterest.

Is your library using Pinterest? Tell us about it in the comments!

Did you miss last week's post? Read more here about how Libraries are using Pinterest!