The keynote speakers at the 2007 Alaska Library Association conference were the “Unshelved Guys”, Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum. I was laughing too hard for most of their presentation, especially after their “Unshelved Library Simulator” to take great notes, but here are some impressions and funny quotes.
“Librarians prefer the shadows”, Gene Ambaum, explaining why he didn’t want to take the spotlight.
Explaining Unshelved to non-librarians “It’s like Cheers, only with books!”
Real life story turned into a comic strip – Patron comes to library wanting to find psychics. Librarian opens phone book. Patron says, no I want to find REAL psychics. Librarian – “Concentrate really hard and true psychics will find you!”
Another real life story – homeless man living in library ceiling.
Bill Barnes said it was ok to hang their Sunday color strips (aka Unshelved Book Club) around your library to promote books and reading.
A cartoonist’s greatest fear is hearing four little words “I don’t get it.” This was true in spades when a strip featuring both a book by the “Fly Lady” and the Mallville library beaver holding a Bible was forwarded to a list of 250K people who had never heard of Unshelved. They got bundles of hate mail decrying the strip with a “monkey holding a Bible.” As a Christian myself, I’m not sure what would be offensive about such a picture. Ambaum was elected to respond to the piles of e-mail explaining that it was a man in a beaver suit who was holding the Bible. This satisfied all but one complainer who steadfastedly maintained that the Unshelved boys were in fact going to burn in Hell.
Fun fact – In every audience but ours, Barnes and Ambaum report that between 1 and 4 librarians have seen a slice of bacon used as a bookmark in a returned book.
If you organize any kind of library conference, you need these guys!
