Visit our current display of library memes on the first floor of Oboler Library on the Pocatello campus of Idaho State University.
Library memes tend to be satirical about library culture and services or recontextualize stock images to humorously market library sources and services.
The term meme stems from the Greek word mimeca for imitation and was resurrected into modern use by evolutionary biologist Richar Dawkins (1976), which he defined as a unit of cultural information spread by imitation in his work, "The Selfish Gene" (Rogers, 2021). Dawkins envisioned memes as bits of cultural information that self-replicate similar to the way biological selfish genes self-replicate. The online environment of the internet has made Dawkins's conception of memes come to fruition. The internet has continued the biological conceptualization by describing highly shared media, including memes, as "viral."
Memes are both simple and complex. Memes are fun b
ecause "they’re cheeky, they’re funny and they’re relatable. . . In other words, memes appeal to the widest possible audience because they are easy to understand," and they are also complex because they can help us make sense of difficult situations, even tragedy, through parody (Barton, 2020, p.4).
As part of the Library's outreach activities, we periodically post memes on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The Library uses memes because of their viral nature to help drive awareness of library resources and services to students, staff, and faculty such as live chat, database access, study spaces, and much more.
Rogers, K. (IMarch 18, 2021). Meme. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/meme
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