Citation
Accart, J.-P. (2012), "The librarian geek – part one", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 29 No. 9. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2012.23929iaa.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
The librarian geek – part one
Article Type: Hot off the Press! From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 29, Issue 9
Hot off the Press! is a column dedicated to new trends and tendencies in information technologies and social networking with a note of the items’ value to technologies in libraries. Also mentioned in the column are new books on topics such as mobile computing, social networking, and even novels with a focus on technology. Also highlighted are some technology blogs, web sites, archived webinars, movies with a technology theme, and more. The main topic for this Autumn issue is: “Librarian Geek” – Part One.
Is it not necessary to define a librarian […] but how to define a geek? According to Wikipedia, “the word geek is a slang term for odd or non-mainstream people, with different connotations ranging from ‘a computer expert or enthusiast’ to ‘a person heavily interested in a hobby’, with a general pejorative meaning of ‘a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person’, esp[ecially] one who is perceived to be overly intellectual” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek).
Librarian geek
Literature and novels nowadays have found a new hero: the geek! Surrounded by technologies, permanently connected on the web, the geek is very often a young guy (less often a young girl, except in the Stieg Larsson’s trilogy thriller “Millenium” where the heroin Lisbeth Salander is closer to the gothic geek style, or the gothic hacker […]), but the phenomenon reaches the entire society, group-by-group, and the age of the individual is becoming less significant. In libraries, the profession is more and more involved in social networking, and has its own heroes, the librarian geeks! Maybe you are one of them – or maybe you are following some famous ones in the library and information world – such as Tim O’Reilly, or ResourceShelf, or institutions like The Library of Congress and Europeana. But before developing the geek librarian side […] let us have a look to two books (one novel and one testimony) recently published in France about geeks and digital life.
Citizen geek
The Theory of Information, a novel by Aurelien Bellanger
At the end of The Theory of Information, the author provides a definition of poetry and novels which is not very lyrical: “They are scholarly attempts to encode the maximum information in minimum words.” This description can be seen as “poetic art” and reflects this novel quite exactly. Aurelien Bellanger, 32 years old, has written here his first book, with 500 tightened pages which aim to embrace the history of the past 30 years and all the changes that occurred. He wishes his readers to enter into a new era not only technological but also, according to him, religious. To reach this goal, Bellanger builds a character, Pascal Erlanger, who is the twin of Xavier Neel, well-known in France as the founder of “Free” (an internet and TV provider).
Pascal Ertanger, the “hero”, is a stranger to the universe that surrounds him; he is “indifferent” to life since he nearly lost it when he was 12. Thinking that “the outside world is moving better without him”, he creates his own […] from the Basic programming language. Coming from wealthy suburbs of Paris, he leaves the university and built “a pink empire” on the internet (so to say based on real sex). A millionaire at the age of 20, he developed Demon, the first internet service provider, at a time when no one yet believed in this market. Then there will be the creation of a single box proposing to bring together “all the techniques of communication of the past century: telephone, radio, television, and digital networks”. Designated as the “baron of the Web”, his ascension is permanent, but this genius of innovation is more and more isolated at each step of his own development, looking like the billionaire Howard Hughes (1905-1976). This story shows one more time that human beings never remember the story of Icarus, and that this will kill him.
More than the portrait of a man, more than a warning against geeks and the web, the Theory of Information is an epic novel. The story is at the same time technological, economic, philosophical, metaphysical, and sociological. To Erlanger, “information theory” serves as a new “religious theory”, not to mention interludes on the philosophy of Leibniz or the post-humanity […].
If you are not used to the digital world, this novel is sometimes difficult to follow even if the author shows sometimes a very good sense of cold humor: we meet, on some pages, some real characters as Nicolas Sarkozy (previous French President) for example, and it is very colourful […]. Thus, it took until 2012 to publish the first French novel authentically geek.
La Théorie de l’information, d’Aurélien Bellanger, Gallimard, 496 pp., 22,50€.
Unplugged by Thierry Crouzet
As most of the people in the early days of e-mail, you were looking at your messages one or two times a day. But today how many times in one hour do you look at them? Do you see your messages compulsively every five minutes as if your life depended on them? Are you looking for your mobile phone with more excitement than your keys? In one word, if you think we are more and more slaves of the internet and technology, you are probably right!
For 15 years, Thierry Crouzet was a social networking guru and author of many books on new technologies. Thierry’s friends said he was a social networking addict. His wife laughed at him when he claimed to work in his office. His children were more used to seeing him playing with his mobile phone than talking to them. That was Thierry Crouzet’s life before what we call his “digital burn out”. On February 2011, he realized that his life was not a happy life. He, who for years claimed that the net was helping to change the world, knew it was time to change if he wanted to save his marriage and his family. Exhausted by this hyperactivity online, he decided to detoxify himself and warned his thousands of friends on Facebook and Twitter that he will be leaving for six months. And he disappeared from the net! As it was summertime, he stopped on a beach in the South of France and wrote his book Unplugged.
Throughout his adventure, his friends, his children, and especially his wife, true heroine of his book Unplugged, he began rebuilding his life little-by-little: it led him to visit a meditation guru, to learn yoga, and also to spend time walking, rowing, cycling, and exploring nature without end. Paradox: digital friends applauded. Many have expressed their desire to imitate him […]. Perhaps we all need to imitate Thierry Crouzet.
http://blog.tcrouzet.com/jai-debranche/
It is time now to see what is happening on the library and librarians side. Are we all geeks?
Geek the Library
A Community Awareness Campaign: a report by OCLC
Geek the Library, a Community Awareness Campaign designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries and raise awareness about the critical funding issues many libraries face, was developed based on the research findings included in From Awareness to Funding: A Study of Library Support in America. This study, published by OCLC in 2008, found that increasing funding support for public libraries requires changing community perceptions. This new report details results of the Geek the Library pilot campaign which was conducted in partnership with nearly 100 public libraries in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin. The results are optimistic.
The report suggests that Geek the Library can change perceptions about libraries, librarians and public library funding, and that implementation of the campaign can positively impact public library funding trends. Findings include:
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Geek the Library gets people’s attention. In just five months, more than half of surveyed residents were familiar with the campaign.
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Geek the Library raises awareness. Perceptions and attitudes around the library’s importance and value in the community improved in Southern Georgia, and more people said they were willing to fund the library.
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Geek the Library encourages action. Over two-thirds of surveyed residents in both Southern Georgia and Central Iowa had planned or had taken an action as a result of the campaign, including talking to friends and family about the library or attending a library event.
The report contains details from qualitative and quantitative research, as well as interesting insights based on the experiences of participating libraries.
www.oclc.org/reports/pdfs/geekthelibrary_summary.pdf
Geek the Library in Delaware and Wallkill Public (NYC) libraries
Here are some examples of what “Geek the Library” means. I took two examples (in Delaware and New York City); of course you can find similar examples all around the world. But, in my opinion, those libraries found the right way to address the public in simple and direct way.
“We Geek the Delaware Dream”
Annie Norman, State Librarian and Director of Delaware Libraries, explains in a few words what she means by “We geek the Delaware Dream”: “Delaware libraries help you indulge that passion with millions of books, movies, music, magazines, newspapers, Internet access, programs, and more! And with your computer or smart phone, you can access library services from wherever you are – whenever the mood strikes! Throughout 2012, your librarians are revealing their own style of geekiness to encourage you to share yours. What better way to relieve stress and beat the economy than to unleash our passions? Let’s all put our expertise and ingenuity to work for our future! And let’s all have lots of fun while we’re at it!” On Flickr, Delaware libraries expose themselves in different and interesting geeky ways: www.flickr.com/photos/delawarelibraries/sets/72157629969704570/. Even the Dewey classification helps to geek http://lib.de.us/geekthelibrary/whatdoyougeek
The Wallkill Public Library in NYC
This was the first library in New York to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded campaign to give library leaders tools to generate enthusiasm in their communities. In an article on the blog “Impatient Optimists,” Mary Lou Corolan, Director of Wallkill Public Library, writes that last summer she picked up the ballgame schedule for the Hudson Valley Renegades (New York) baseball team. Scanning the list of sponsors – a local hospital, an insurance company and car dealerships – she wondered, “Why don’t public libraries sponsor these kinds of events?” which is a good question […]. On June 30, 2012, 21 area libraries joined together to sponsor Geek the Library Night, to raise awareness of the Geek the Library community awareness campaign, to a sold out crowd of over 5,000 who came to watch the Renegades play against “the Staten Islands”.
Corolan describes how librarians from Hudson Valley libraries worked together to create a fun presence at the stadium, reaching out to baseball fans, some of whom may not have been inside of a library for years: “They stuffed hundreds of goodie bags with library card applications, informative bookmarks and brochures, summer reading flyers, pencils, stickers and tattoos. Using a laptop computer along with a Nook and a Kindle, people were showed how librarians are responding to new uses of technology and introduced them to the downloading of eBooks – for free. We asked fans ‘What do you Geek?’ and had them write their passions down on a huge display”.
Those examples taken in the literature – from the Geek novel to the Geek Testimony – and in the library landscape – show how much we are more and more surrounded by technology […] and libraries are part of it. The next issue of the column Hot off the Press! will be focused on “the Librarian Geek.”
Jean-Philippe AccartDirector of Studies, Programme Master of Advanced Studies in Archival, Library and Information Science (MAS ALIS), Universities of Bern and Lausanne, Bern, Switzerland. (jpaccart@gmail.ch)