Having spent most of my life working with words, writing them, editing them, trying to find the right one for the sentence or event, I'm particularly sensitive to using words correctly.
My mother was the same way. She hated commercials and billboards that used "lite" for light and "nite" for night, etc.
She was a proofreader by nature and she worried about the future of the world if people didn't bother to treat the English language with respect.
So when I first learned about the "Geekthelibrary" program, I was slow to warm to it.
Not only did this program ask people to regard "geek" as a verb — rather than the noun it actually is — but all the words are runtogetherlikethis.
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| Kirsty Stalder on one of our posters |
Working with a mega-grant from Bill and Melinda Gates, the Geekthelibrary people introduce libraries to new ways to increase awareness and to create broad support. They supply ideas and start-up materials if we agree to take the ideas and run with them.
Hopefully, the increased awareness leads to increased moral and much-needed financial support for libraries that are losing ground in this changing world.
Eventually I began to see that people who "geek" libraries understand that a good, well-equipped, well-stocked library is a resource not only for lovers of fiction, romance and mystery but it can provide direction, answers, technical assistance and valuable support for everything from finding a new job to figuring out new ways to enrich one's world.
I see where geeks become a positive force as they immerse themselves into opportunities and challenge the norm.
Along the way, they improve the world around them in fresh, new ways.
I now "geek" where I haven't geeked before.
Come find out how it works at the Geekthelibrary Launch event at the library Tuesday, April 16th from 7-8 p.m. Listen to the local blue-grass band "Stringshot" and have some refreshment.
You can even volunteer to be on one of our posters (shot by Mark Bowers of Bowers Photography).
I geek it.
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