Attendees at the talk on NERS during the Ghent conference were treated to a surprise performance: at the end of the session: Mark Dehmlow and the Steering Committee’s own Lukas Koster got on stage and performed a very special adaptation of the Pink Floyd song Wish You Were Here.
In Lukas’s words:
“It all started in Madrid during IGeLU 2008, in a bar one night. A couple of participants talked about enriching lyrics of Beatles songs with Ex Libris product names. Maybe we could even perform at IGeLU with a group of people…
So, I don’t know how it happened exactly, but this year I got the idea of adjusting the lyrics of the Pink Floyd song to the library and Ex Libris environment. Somehow this worked. I asked Mark Dehmlow of Notre Dame University Hesburgh Libraries, who was one of the original partners in crime, if he was still interested, and he agreed to do it.
Apologies for the mistakes in the beginning. We practiced for hours and got it right in the end, but after a long and busy conference day we had some problems getting it going.”
The video was provided by Matthias Gross of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, who had the presence of mind to record it on his mobile phone.
You can also view the lyrics should you wish to perform the song yourself at home.