Dear Readers,

Get ready for the biting humor, and slightly asynchronous conversation that will ensue. For more information, check out Feb 16th’s post, 8bitlibrary+Unshelved+IMchat=#MIH.

List of characters:

me: Andrea Davis of 8bitlibrary

JP: JP Porcaro of 8bitlibrary

Bill: Bill Barnes of Unshelved

Gene: Gene Ambaum of Unshelved

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Bill: Okay, I think we are on the record… NOW.
JP: HA!
me: —– mic on ——
10:30 AM (metaphorically speaking)
Gene: First fact for the interview: our store manager, Jana, eats Nutella out of the jar with a spoon.
Bill: Second fact: that’s all she eats, ever.
JP: can we start with the philosophical: why are we here?
EWWW i hate nutella
me: We’re doing a great experiment today for 8bitlibrary – a 4 person IM chat interview
Bill: You hate Nutella? This interview is over.
me: let the madness ensue!
…
me: go ahead an give yourselves an introduction
Gene: I’m Gene. Only not really.
Bill: I’m Bill Barnes, I take Gene’s amorphous blatherings and turn them into comedy gold every day in Unshelved.
Gene: The Italian one is the good one. No yeast, just hazlenut and chocolate.
I’m the hairy one.
Bill: This is going really well.
JP: how hairy is hairy?
me: HAAAA – yea, let’s see what happens
Bill: Pretty hairy.
Gene: Not like, “Gah! Get that off the beach!” hairy. My back looks like Angel (member of the X-men) when he started getting his wings, only I’m getting black wings.
JP: i always wished i had wings.
me: I’m Andrea Davis, a newly minted librarian, stirring things up and pushing to put the fun back in li-boring-ian
JP: Im JP Porcaro
I run 8bitlibrary.com
Gene: Hey JP. Have we met before?
JP: and also do virtual services at a university library
me: black swan style? (disclaimer, i stil need to see the movie, but i’ve heard)
Gene: (And hey to you to, Andrea, though I can’t remember, hard a or soft a?)
JP: OMG I hope we didn’t because I don tremember if we did
me: soft like my belly
Gene: And i stress about vowels. Now I will never forget.
I don’t think so, JP. Bill just pulled up a pic.
me: memornics are an amazing skill to master (i’m working on it still)
sooooooo – unshelved….
happy early birthday!!!
Bill: Thank you.
Gene: Thanks!
Bill: Next year is our 10th. I think we’ll have to do something awesome.
me: how does a 9 year old comic strip behave?
Gene: I’m thinking cake
me: (you’re doing something awesome now)
Gene: Lots of random crying and temper tantrums. We’re hoping Unshelved will hit puberty soon.
JP: Why “un”shelved. Why not “de”shelved?
like that whole defriending/unfriending scandle
Bill: Unshelved predates defriending.
It also predates Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone.
Unshelved is your grumpy uncle who doesn’t understand technology.
JP: Do you guys work in a library now?
Bill: I never worked in a library. And I never will.
Gene: Occasionally. But very occasionally. I left my full-time job in library land in October 2009.
10:39 AM me: So Unshelved has become a fulltime gig?
Gene: It has!
Bill: It’s a little more than fulltime.
me: How does that feel?
Gene: fulltime+
me: Where do you get your “material” now?
Bill: I love answering to no one other than my wives.
10:40 AM me: plural?
JP: Poligamy!
Yes!
Now we’re getting somewhere
Gene: It feels strange whenever I have a moment to think about it. It’s usually when someone asks me what I do for a living. “I write a comic.” “You draw a comic?” “No. Let me explain.”
Bill: I have my actual wife and two collaborators who I very much feel married to.
me: makes sense, interesting phrasing
JP: Ok, so you left your job(s) for Unshelved. Is this a “forever” thing for you guys?
Gene: I get my material mostly when I’m in line at Target, trying to return something, or just watching people lose it with their kids. Probably my favorite place to people watch these days because the red shirts make it so easy to figure out who’s the employee behaving badly and who’s the customer.
I’m like two questions back…
JP: Sorry lol
hit send too soon
Bill: STOP IT WITH THE ATTACK JOURNALISM, ANDREA
me: (we’ll take it – cut & paste is a magical tool)
Bill: Forever is a long time.
Gene: It’s not long enough.
Bill: But so long as people are reading Unshelved and we figure out a way to get paid for it, I’m in.
me: (Bill was that “there will be blood” sneaking in?)
Gene: Thar she blows!!!
Bill: I love working with Gene, and I hope we’ll do lots of other stuff together in addition to Unshelved.
(I’ve never seen it, actually)
Gene: (holding hands)
me: like lunch pails?
Bill: I love you man.
Gene: You told her about the thermos?
JP: i want to know about the thermos
Bill: Unshelved: Hot on the inside, cool to the touch.
Andrea, I assume you are referring to the Gale lunchbox promotion?
me: that’s the one
Bill: I am pretty excited about that, I have to say.
me: (and hopping back a moment: http://www.toonzone.net/homemovies/WalterPerry.html)
Gene: It’s going to be fun.
Bill: At Midwinter I went around and introduced myself at a bunch of big-company booths. The Gale guy took my card and said, “cartoonist? we’re talking about making superhero lunchboxes” and here we are.
me: i was just thinking this weekend (while walking around target no less) that i wish i could get a lunch pail instead of the boring cooler lunch sacks that make for an unexcitingstaffroom fridge
Gene: It’s hard not to be designing the characters already.
Bill: I actually did design one. He’s a stretchy guy like Mr. Fantastic called OUTREACHER
10:46 AM me: my left side is better ;)
Gene: Make a lunch sack out of the skin of your enemy. Then sell it on Etsy.
Bill: See, because he’s an outreach librarian.
JP: OOOO the Outreacher! I like it. How about an Advocacy superhero (villian)?
me: (i can only begin to imagine the pitching sessions you fellas go through each week)
10:47 AM the metadata magician
Bill: We probably don’t do enough actual pitching.
me: crosswalking up down and all around
Bill: Gene sends me scripts and I mangle them beyond recognizability.
me: dublic core got nothing on her!
Bill: But we are negotiating a couple of longer-term plotlines. We are really bad at it.
JP: Negotiating with who?
Gene: (You’re confusing Bill with your library speak, but I like the Dublin Core.)
me: how long term? many of your strips stretch across 4 or 5 sets of panels
Gene: We’ve got a few year-long arcs in mind right now, which is unusual.
Negotiating with each other.
(sipping green tea to make myself feel wise)
me: big themes like budget cuts? library as place? or dewey gets pregnant?
Bill: I’m trying to learn from Paul Southworth, my collaborator/wife on Not Invented Here, my other comic strip. He’s really good at plot arcs.
Dewey’s just a little overweight.
Gene: Budget cuts is one.
Bill: Yes, we’re already part way through that one.
me: ebooks
Bill: That’s not a plot arc, just a topic.
Gene: eBooks are always on my mind. Especially because it hurts my eyes to read my iPad after a while.
Library as place? You think we could build an arc out of that?
“Still here. Same carpet.”
JP: HAHAHA
Gene: “I made that stain when I was 12, son.”
me: i’m gonna touch that one, nor the drapes
JP: I have a serious question: how did you make it happen? Take your idea for a comic and make it a full time + job?
Gene: Terror.
Bill: We’re an overnight success 9 years in the making.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, kid, practice.
Gene: We just started doing it. And we kept doing it. We’re living proof of how low the bar is.
Bill: We do it by having about twelve business models and being very aggressive about coming up with new ones.
Gene: Also, our wives are spectacular. They make us look better (and hence more successful) than we actually are.
JP: Gotcha!
Bill: And we were lucky enough to have an audience loyal enough to forgive how truly primitive our strip was in the early days.
…
Bill: Yes, lots of non librarian readers. I’m pretty careful to filter out the stuff I don’t understand (like “dublin core” and “library as place”)
me: (my card catalog “never forget” has been a hit at the pajama parties thus far)
10:55 AM Bill: Pajama parties? Pics or it didn’t happen.
Gene: They like to feel like they’re part of the in-group, seeing behind the scenes at the library they visit.
me: wise to have a non-library filter
JP: HAHAHA, 4chan reference
Gene: Pajama parties on a military base?
Bill: Most of our humor is character based, usually just spawned by some random library topic that most people can grasp.
…
Gene: We’re just going to throw someone into the mix who makes us laugh.
That’s the secret, we’re just amusing each other. When we’re not trying to get each other to stick to a deadline.
Bill: It’s true. We’re just making each other laugh. That’s the best we can do. I’m amazed that so many people laugh with us.
me: yea, how do you work “life” into the comic schedule?
Bill: Normally I work a 45 hour week, and so life is no problem. Except that we also travel about a week a month.
Gene: It’s not that hard. It’s the most forgiving of schedules, really. I can work anywhere (and often do at my daughter’s swim lessons).
…
Gene: We’re going to a library conference in northern BC that I’m really looking forward to, in Prince George. It’s called “Beyond Hope” (there’s a town to the south called Hope). Greatest name for a library conference ever.
JP: i like it
me: no joke!!!!
Bill: Oh, travel. Well we’re doing about a dozen talks. And there’s nothing more exciting for me than making a room full of people laugh.
…
Gene: Someone at another library conference where we’re speaking in the fall said they were still looking for a theme. Someone had suggested “Where’s the Bar?” or something like that. But it was voted down.
Gene: No joke on Beyond Hope. And it’s a small conference, so it should be an ultra-cool experience. Plus Canadians really know how to throw an after-party.
Bill: How about “Leave the Bottle”
JP: Can I steal the “where’s the bar?” theme?
Bill: If you want to see what it takes to make a living as a cartoonist, check out http://www.unshelved.com/talks
Bill: ANDREA SLOW DOWN
me: …catch up ;)
…
JP: Can I ask a serious one?
Gene: sure.
Bill: We’ve been waiting for a serious one.
oneandoneandoneisthree: Do libraries need “saving”?
Bill: We’re like “when’s this gonna GET REAL?”
Gene: Some do, sure.
Bill: I defer to my actual librarian friend.
Gene: But they need saving from a lot of things, don’t they.
JP: LOL I’d love to hear from the non-librarian, too. There’s all this talk about saving libraries, and i wonder
Gene: I just watched Eli Neiburger’s presentation Libraries are Screwed. I like Eli. (Great hair!) But he scared the shit out of me.
JP: From what?
and also, are we doing that bad of a job?
Eli is one of 8bitlibrary’s team, and he’s our mentor!
Bill: I can only speak from my perspective as a patron. My wife homeschools our kids so we are MAJOR library users. We literally (and literarily) check out 50 books a week. So every little cut in hours really affects us.
Gene: But another big problem is libraries never fire employees that underperform (or completely refuse to perform). I think we’re too nice. And then your hard working employees look around and say, “Fuck, why am I working so hard when X never does?” and then they check out, too. It’s catching.
me: you have some tender-hearted moments in unshelved, but a good dose of the humor has the what-went-wrong
wow, gene, nailed it!
JP: Gene, man, you hit the nail on the head. Bill, I was homeschooled for awhile. Ok i defer to andrea
Bill: LANGUAGE, GENE
Gene: I seriously think we’re doing too much. My wife asked me the same thing the other day (after Eil’s presentation, which I made the family watch during dinner). In response, I asked my wife, the smartest person I know, what the library’s mission was. And she couldn’t tell me.
Bill: I really think libraries could just focus on traditional stock-books-for-people-to-check-out and they’d do great.
me: seems we’re all scratching our heads about that too.
Gene: And I think that’s crazy.
I think we do too much for folks who don’t vote.
Bill: Gene and I disagree about almost everything.
JP: So how do you guys feel about the non-book stuff then. gaming & such?
Gene: (And I’m a bleeding heart, don’t get me wrong.) I just think that since we survive on the (voting) public’s good will, we should probably focus on them and serve everyone else, too.
Bill: I like the idea of libraries stocking games that people can check out, same as movies and music.
As for programs, meh.
Gene: I like games. But I prefer board games to video games — they bring people together in an entirely different way and people get to know one another.
Bill: AGREED. WE AGREE.
Gene: Games are cheap programs, though, and libraries need to look at what a program actually costs them in terms of staff time, hardware, etc. Games are cheap.
JP: I guess the problem there, then, is exactly what Eli touched on…when we CAN’T loan ou tphysical stuff, what is a library there for?
Bill: I have never really understood programs. Why do libraries care if people come in do play games, etc.?
JP: Community engagement
Gene: Why do libraries do programs that serve the same 50 people, week after week?
JP: This is true!
me: (nodded here)
Bill: Do communities need to be engaged?
JP: On an event bigger scale, we loan out books like like, what, 5% of the population…what about the other 95%
even*
Gene: That’s my problem with it. We’re not making conversions, not really. Sure, we go to the new immigrants and let them know what we’re up to, which is great, but that’s low hanging fruit.
Bill: But maybe only 5% of the population really reads.
Gene: My other rant is about how libraries see themselves as retail environments. And I hate that. Because for retail, more business is a good thing. You can afford to expand. But when libraries get too much business the service falls apart (or standards fall, at least).
me: libraries have also become one of the only free access sources for internet usage
JP: Yea, i think that’s the struggle: do we need to fund something out of tax dollars that only serves 5%…not sure if that’s a question
Gene: And that’s great, free internet.
Shouldn’t municipalities just provide free wifi and internet stations scattered throughout the community? (If that’s what folks value about the library.)
…
Gene: Because making any adjustments to the library model would mean folks would lose their jobs. And that’s the last thing we want.
Bill Barnes: bastard.
JP: LOL
…
Ok since we’re almost out of time, will you guys party with the 8bitlibrary crew when you come out to the east Coast?
Gene: I’m just ranting in the corner. I’m going to start making things out of beads.
Sure. Where are you?
…
Gene: But only if you fly Andrea out.
bedazzled!
JP: I’m right next to NYC! She’s in the west coast now.
me: sweeeeet!!!
Bill: Well I hope you can parse something readable out of this chat session.
me: for your next batch of expo floor margaritas
yeaaa…we’ll see about that
JP: Thanks guys. I
me: it was fun
Gene: Those margaritas were good.