An exciting update today — Reel Librarians has joined Pinterest!

Why have I joined Pinterest? I kept noticing some traffic come my way from related boards — and back at the start of the year, I even highlighted Saint Mary’s College Library’s Pinterest board that showcases reel libraries and librarians. And some of the screenshots and images from this site have been pinned, so I thought it was high time to generate some bonus content myself, and perhaps generate more traffic to this site, as well. Plus, I like the idea of “curating” collections, or mini-collections, in a more visual way via Pinterest.

So far, I’ve created 12 boards of content pinned from this site, including boards for each category (Classes I through V) of the different films I’ve posted about. If you’re not familiar with how I classify the films, click here. (Basically, I classify films according to how important the reel librarian is to the film.)

And I’ve got a list of ideas for future boards to create (or rather, curate?) along with this site, including:

• character types for both male and female reel librarians
• various lists I’ve posted (like “reel librarians in love” and “killer librarians“)
• quotations from the “Quotable Librarian” posts
• librarian songs and videos
• reel librarian firsts
• master list

What would you like to see? Any other Pinterest-related ideas? Please leave a comment and let me know!

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Last week, I taught a library instruction session on evaluating sources, and the class discussion included the changing nature of research. We touched on academic sources, wikis, blogs, as well as hybrid sources, like scholarly blogs. I had collaborated on the session beforehand with the course instructor, who was eager for me to pull in this very site, Reel Librarians, as a real-life example of a hybrid source, one with a personal connection.

This site’s foundation is the 10+ years of research of finding and analyzing films with librarians — resulting in the sections of Movie Lists, Role Call, Reel Substance, and Resources — while the homepage is the blog, featuring weekly posts that serve as a kind of bridge between entertainment and scholarship. I strive to capture a friendly, approachable tone in my posts, but with content based on analysis and research.

Back in the classroom, the revelation of a site out there on reel librarians (!) seemed to both surprise and intrigue some of the students. Initial questions included:

How many films are out there that have librarians?
[Insert shocked expressions of students when I pointed out the Movie Lists section and revealed the number reached into the hundreds, and even more when you factored in foreign films and TV shows.]

How long have you been doing this?
[Over 10 years, and I got to point out the About tab along the top.]

Who’s your favorite movie librarian?
[I pointed out the Best & Worst tab along the top.]

Is that a picture of you?
[Yep, that tiny pic on the righthand side is of me.]

Do you have the film Jumanji in there?
[Nope, but I've since added it to the Master List for further investigation.]

And my favorite question:

What do your parents do?

When I shared that both my parents were teachers, and my mom is also a school librarian [insert more amazed facial expressions], one student piped up:

Wow! You never stood a chance, did you? You had no choice but to be smart.

That reaction cracked me up!

And it also reminded me of this clip from Friends, when Chandler revealed his middle name. (Click to watch the video on YouTube, and the name reveal happens about 1 minute into the clip.)

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Cheers to you, 2012, and happy 2013!

This past year marked my first full year as a blogger and for this blog, which I began in Sept. 2011. The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog, so click here to view the complete report. Below are some quick numbers, as well, breaking down my blog for 2012.

23,490 total views (over 25,500 overall, woweeee!)

111 posts

146 comments

122 shares

65 daily visits (average)

35 followers

If you’d like to see a specific topic or movie addressed in the new year, please let me know.

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