The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: A Title of Uncommon Stickiness

The [just published] Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer sports a title that sets viscosity records in mental stickiness. It reminds us by example that titles are much more than accessories or afterthoughts. Would I have opened the book, Heroic Librarians Save the Day down Sub-Sahara Way? Probably not.  

A title—bad-ass or otherwise—contributes disproportionately to a book’s identity. And it wields added weight via the Primacy Effect, which skews the impact of messages positioned up front.

The above title succeeds on multiple fronts. Each of its components—i.e., bad-ass librarians; Timbuktu—evokes concrete images. And their juxtaposition is amusingly anomalous. You just might  open the book to find out why.

Preserving Culture

What’s more, the title’s got rhythm. Individually and in combination, its components aid and abet percussive, polyrhythmic cadences. On first and subsequent hearings, the title’s 11-syllable play-out seemed vaguely familiar. Then I remembered the Owl and the Pussycat:

The Bad-Ass            Librarians of                            Timbuktu

The     Owl               and the pussy cat                    went to sea

My only misgiving with all this is that in lending the title dominance on the book’s cover/dust jacket, the publisher has diminished clarity by deploying a stylized fancy-ass cursive (sse first graphic). By the way, the book is a gracefully written deep dive into Mali's beautiful literary and musical heritage—a culture (among others) that is at risk at the hands of bad-asses (not the librarians) who infuse their transcendent aims with testosterone poisoning.

The Skinny on Consumer First Impressions in Hospitals

Hospital president/cardboard cutout as greeter

Take it from social psychologists (and  marketers): the primacy effect—your first impressions of a person, place, predicament, etc.—often carry disproportionate heft.  With that in mind, it’s not unfair to ask why hospitals and other medical practices often deploy overweight employees in reception and other intake roles. That at least was your blogger’s experience last week at Northampton, Massachusetts’s Cooley Dickenson Hospital, where just inside the main entrance, he negotiated a long carpeted corridor, festooned with friendly but capacious receptionists.

What’s surprising about that? In the medical services cosmos, receptionists earn the lowest salaries, have the lowest education levels, and work the most sedentary jobs.  Why should they be svelter than ordinary Americans, where in 2008 2/3 of adults were overweight. 

Not to worry. Beyond the magic (intake) curtain, you encounter slimmer and trimmer employees—medical technicians (skill level and weight may correlate somewhat here), nurses, and physicians.

As for primacy—a hospital can’t insist that its receptionists slim down, but it can nudge them via a (this may be a stretch) “preventive”  culture that emphasizes  creative exposure to education, exercise, and diet--all socially and perhaps economically reinforced. Until then, Cooley Dickenson will likely continue to make its best first impression with the life-size cardboard likeness of its trim Harvard/MIT-educated president, Chris Melin. He greets you just inside the door, is easy on the eyes, and offers preventive advice to boot.