In 2014, when I was the IT Manager for the Johnson City Public Library, the library participated in Geek the Library, a community-based public awareness campaign. To heighten awareness about the critical funding issues public libraries face, the campaign highlighted what people were passionate about and how libraries could support them. Geek the Library featured local educational material that introduced “geek” as a verb, and encouraged the public to talk about what they “geek”—whether it was engineering, superheroes or art. The public awareness campaign illustrated the fact that everyone is passionate about something—everyone “geeks” something—and that the library supports them all.
The campaign encouraged libraries to produce their own promotional materials. The program provided guidelines for posters, for example, to use black backgrounds, red and white letters in American Typewriter font, and individuals or small groups of people who geek whatever personally interests them. It was, after all, a highly branded campaign by OCLC and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This campaign became an opportunity for me to create several dozen posters of staff, city employees, and community people sharing what they geek. It was an interesting experience, learning new things about the people I saw and worked with every day.
We encouraged people, if they could, to bring props with them to include in their pictures. That turned out to be very interesting; one woman brought a bag of live snakes; a man who geeked J.R.R. Tolkien brought a very large and authentic-looking sword. Including props helped participants relax and be engaged in their photos. We also involved the City of Johnson City. Working with the city’s Community Relations department, we created a theme, “We Geek City Services.” The goal for the project was two-fold; one, to reinforce the original Geek the Library campaign, and two, provide a springboard for the city to put real faces on the people who work behind the scenes to make Johnson City a great place to live.
In all, I created over 70 unique posters in the combined Geek the Library and We Geek City Services campaigns. You can see many of the designs in the Geek the Library and We Geek City Services galleries on Flickr. I also used the Geek the Library theme for that year’s Johnson City Public Library’s Annual Report.
