Did anyone get into work today, only to be asked “Did you see that librarian on Australian Idol last night - do you know who it was?”.
Getting a bit Perez Hilton-y here, the lint spies can reveal that it is Andrew Finegan, who works as Reference Librarian at Darwin City Council Libraries. Same guy who won the lint “Library 2010″ competition with his video clip about making libraries cool.
His blog, called - you guessed it - Librarian Idol - has a post today about being on the tele, and even links to the clip, Andrew Finegan and geeks: Librarian girl, in case you missed it.
If he looked kind of familiar, you may have seen him arguing that librarians shouldn’t be politically active in the debate during the last New Librarian’s Symposium, or speaking at the Generation Y Workforce event held at the State Library of Victoria a couple of weeks ago. Or maybe you caught his stage show, Librarian Idol, at the Groggy Squirrel as part of the Darwin Fringe Festival at the end of June.
Andrew’s mission to “make libraries cool”is working. The film clip was about 20 seconds long and showed a lot of footage of the library. I wonder how much advertisers would have been charged for a similar slot during last night’s launch of Australian Idol.
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August 6, 2007 at 14:33
I just want to clarify, before we get into a “hipster librarian” argument, that I’m totally aware of the flawed nature of a “let’s make librarians cool” mission, and a lot of my tongue is very much embedded in my cheek.
Unfortunately, with the entertainment industry obsessed with image and stereotypes, it’s a bit hard to fight in the context of Oz Idol, especially with the producers taking footage, and using it to remould people to fit certain stereotypes. That other “nerdy guy” with the glasses was actually a really, really good singer, but of course, you never even got to hear him sing. I only got two words from my song aired on national tv, despite actually singing a number of songs for the judges (the other three - not Kyle - wanted more.)
But yeah - it’s great to get the library into prime-time television. It’s good to remind people that they still exist.
August 6, 2007 at 15:50
Andrew, so fun to see you on TV! Can I claim to having discovered you, since NLS was like so 9 months ago now?