Thursday, April 26, 2012

Easter Egg

An Easter Egg is usually a hidden piece of code in a software program that a programmer will put in the software which has hidden properties. Sometimes it an extra level or a cute message.

On my last day at work at the Library, I decided to make my own Easter Egg. Since I was just wrapping up the latest issue (May 2012) of the Library's monthly calender of events, I decided to include two very small names along the outside spine. My children, who are my greatest creations and inspirations (as well as my wife).

So if you pick up the latest calender of events at any of your local library branches, you can turn it over to the back page, look down and riiiight there, near the spine is two, tiny little names, "Jack" and Emma".

It filled me with a little perverse giggle when I went and picked up a copy earlier this week at the City of Fairfax branch and saw this. All 12,000 copies have it.


I tried to  do this type of thing before, when an author was coming to visit who had written a few "39 Clues" books. I designed the publication to have a bunch of "39"s hidden throughout the 12-page publication with a small blurb asking readers to count how many 39's they could find and tweet it to the Library for a chance to win a free book. That way, people would read through the whole publication AND get on twitter. We couldn't agree on a way to give away a few of the books, who would pay for them or what would happen if someone felt cheated and this "exploded in our face". So we decided to not do it. Another clever idea killed.

Well, this was my little way of showing that if you put something in that is out of the norm, the world doesn't open up and swallow everyone, the Library doesn't lose its funding and life goes on as usual.