Zoopraxiscopic Librarian: Nick Baker

When your humble narrator gathered, recently, with sundry of his colleagues, there to speak much (and, it is to be hoped, listen more) with regard to the perfectly endless minutiae of our Noble Discipline's Great Task, he chanced to encounter a colleague whom he had to great fortune to know at school.

The said gentleman has made his way in the world, since, and being a inveterate wearer of many hats, has turned Videorgapher, in the service of his institution. Upon the techné, and much else of this, he discoursed ably to an attentive audience -- this last the more remarkable, as it was the final day and hour we were all to confer, and though the spirit is ever willing, the flesh had begun to crave other comforts than the presence of colleagues in strangely lighted halls.

But how well the audience was rewarded for its attention! This undertaking was, he told the rapt crowd, originally inspired by a symposium on Aetheric and Elcetronickal Storytelling. A bricoleur of the first water, he then turned his attention to documenting the esoterica of our tribe, the delightfully titled March of the Librarians, the which may be seen here.

He is, in particular, in some measure responsible for his library's Aetheric presence, and therefore thinks much of how the library may reach out its steadying hand to the young scholars who yearly come flooding through the gates of its parent institution, seeking what they little conceive, needing they know not what. In an act of Informtical kindness, Our Hero used the medium of moving pictures to convey sundry lessons to them, with a salutary economy.

He spoke much of the relevant technologickal devices and gizmos required, and the scratching of pens was loud in the room, and YHN confidently expects to see an upwelling of Zoopraxiscopes and Kinetoscopes and suchlike in the libraries of the future. His oeuvre may be seen here, and the substance of his discourse to us, here

Gentlebeings, your servant

JJ Drinkwater