|
The remaining Peeps from the original creation of the "Peep
Research" page may by now be rock-hard lumps, but the page itself
lives on in glory: as of March 16, 2005, visits to that page since April 16,
2003 have numbered going on 440,000! (437,291 to be exact.) And now its fame has
reached national television.
CBS's Rita
Braver came to Staley Library with a Chicago CBS film crew on March 2
to record an Easter feature for CBS
News Sunday Morning - namely, to interview Susan Avery and Jen
Masciadrelli about their creation of that famed Peeps page! This will be
part of an Easter Sunday story about the Peeps, including a visit to the Peeps factory
and a look into the varied uses that people make of this curious little
sugar and marshmallow creature. (The question: can you imagine any other
candy that would provide this kind of sometimes bizarre inspiration? No
fair - Barbie is not a candy.)
It was interesting to see how much work goes into producing just a few
minutes of this kind of show: set-up and shifting of lights and microphones,
multiple takes of the introductory phrases (replete with chicken puns), and
long Peeps chats from several camera angles, most of which chats will not be
used in the final feature. (The many Peeps boxes are in fact on the table
primarily to prevent glare from the table.) The crew spent a full morning in
the library, and Ms Braver was there for most of that time as well. Everyone
was most gracious, and it was a comfortable morning.
It was also fun to see Susan and Jen again,
and to catch up on their successes at UIUC. And, fantasy time, how lovely it
would be if we actually had that many librarians around all the time...
|
|
|
More Peeps page exposure (March 23 addendum):
A recent Fortune Magazine article entitled "Easter Basket
Cases" has this to say, "... there are librarians at Milliken
[sic] University who created a website [where t]hey posted three
dozen photographs of Peeps seeming to perform academic research."
Yes our library subscribes to the print version of
Fortune Magazine, so you can
see the whole article for yourself in living color
(v. 151 #6, March 21, 2005, top paragraph p. 46).
Deb Kirchner, MU's Director of Alumni & Development
Communications, came to the library yesterday and took pictures of
Peeps "reading" this magazine, this for the
Millikin Quarterly magazine.
Also, I received a librarian application (see more below) this
morning via email which says in part, " I became acquainted with
the Staley Library via the web Peep Show link a few years ago.
Since I have a well-developed sense of humor and of creativity, I
explored your library web pages to see what other services were
offered. I have the impression that the librarians under your
direction are an enthusiastic team who serve the university
community with a wide and energetic scope."
And the very latest is that Thursday morning, March 24, the
Peep Research page will be making an appearance on
ABC's Good Morning America!!
On the 'Around the Watercooler' segment.
Still more (March 29):
The March 24th New This
Week section of the Librarian's Index to
the Internet (a cool site in its own
right) says, "This week we offer our annual Adoration of
the Peeps, with three sites related to those small, squishy
marshmallow confections." One of those sites is, you guessed
it.
Meanwhile, we have received a gratifying number of applications for the
librarian vacancy, and a number of these applications at first glance look
quite substantial. We will be reviewing these applications in depth this
week (March 14) to determine which candidates merit telephone interviews,
after which we will check references for those candidates we are
considering bringing on campus, presumably in April. |
As always, be sure
to check each month on the library's new acquisitions by clicking
on this heading. February's new titles have already been added.
Also peruse
earlier
newsletters : For one thing, the art exhibit described in the Winter
2005 newsletter is still current. |
|
|
|
