C&RL News July/August 2018 350 On November 29, 2017, a photo of a sign asking library patrons “please do not let in the cat” went viral. It wasn’t long before the Internet lore surrounding Max the Cat exceeded the scope of the original post. Un- til news agencies p i c k e d u p t h e story and t r a c k e d us down, t h e i m - age (and the cat) w a s l a r g e l y divorced from its original context. Few knew it was taken at Macalester College, or in Minnesota even. Being nerdy librarian and historian types, we took this opportunity to learn some new lessons about what virality means for copyright and citation, and how we might reinforce best practices to our students. By examining our own viral moment, we discovered just how easily an image or story can be taken out of context and how hard digital excavation work can be. And if we trained profession- als struggled, what does this mean for our students? It took nearly three weeks for the photo of the sign to go viral. The original handwrit- ten sign did not fare well on the high traffic door, so Chris Schommer scripted a new, improved sign. The photo of that sign went viral in the least straight- forward of ways. T h e p h o t o h a d s o m e s m a l l f l a r e - u p s ( p r e - p a r e y o u r - s e l f , because we’re really going to nurse this viral pun for all it’s worth), but they were localized. The photo went from Rebecca S. Wingo’s Instagram to Tumblr to Twitter to Rebecca S. Wingo is the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Liberal Arts and a historian, email: rebecca. wingo@gmail.com, Alexis Logsdon is the research and instruction librarian for Fine Arts and the Humanities, email: alogsdon@macalester.edu, and Christopher Schommer is the senior library associate in digital scholarship and services, email: cshomme@macalester. edu, at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota © 2018 Rebecca S. Wingo, Alexis Logsdon, and Christopher Schommer Rebecca S. Wingo, Alexis Logsdon, and Christopher Schommer Going viral Copyright lessons from Max the Cat Handwritten sign and printed sign. Photo credit: Rebecca S. Wingo, used with permission. mailto:rebecca.wingo%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:rebecca.wingo%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:alogsdon%40macalester.edu?subject= mailto:cshomme%40macalester.edu?subject= mailto:cshomme%40macalester.edu?subject= mailto:allan.vanhoye%40colorado.edu%20?subject= July/August 2018 351 C&RL News Facebook to Reddit to Twitter to the Wash- ington Post. Yes, the same newspaper that broke Watergate brought you Max the Cat, as one of Wingo’s friends observed. You didn’t quite follow that? Weird. Let’s break it down. • October 31: Wingo posts photo of the handwritten sign on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. • November 6: Wingo posts photo of Schommer’s sign on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. • November 8: A Tumblr user and Ma- calester student (lizardmanjr) posted the sign to their Tumblr account after seeing Wingo’s Instagram post in Macalester’s Mac Daily #heymac feed. Within the week, it had more than 20,000 notes. • N o v e m b e r 14: The post goes s e m i - v i r a l o n Twitter through a reposting ac- count (@CuteP- ics) with nearly 1,000 likes. • N o v e m b e r 29, 10:24 p.m. CST: Reddit user K e n n e t h L e e ’ s girlfriend ran- domly shows him a picture of the Max the Cat sign on Facebook. Lee posts the picture to Reddit, and it goes viral with nearly 113,000 upvotes. • November 29, 2:28 p.m. CST: Erin McGuire, a children’s book illustrator, tweets out the picture from Reddit further spreading the virus with nearly 205,000 likes and more than 60,000 retweets. • November 30: Max the Cat wins the Internet starting with the Washington Post’s article. As of December 31, 2017, it was the sixth most read article on the Animalia blog.1 Why did Max the Cat go viral? Wingo’s original Twitter and Instagram hashtags #OpenAccess and #WorldCat pulled in a very specific library and digital humanities crowd, and the Internet loves cats, but this could hardly be considered a reliable viral DNA sequence. libraries + cats ≠ viral If that equation doesn’t work, then we have an x-factor to define. libraries + cats + x = viral Max’s Internet popularity was not geo- graphically restricted, so we looked for national reasons that Max won America’s h e a r t . D u r i n g t h e w e e k t h e post went viral on Tumblr, there was a shooting in a Texas church, George Takei and Richard Dreyfus were accused of sexual assault, R o y M o o r e ’ s predatory behav- ior continued to make headlines, and it was just over a year since the 2016 election. When Max hit Reddit on No- vember 29, NBC fired Matt Lauer, NPR fired Garrison Keillor, the House tax bill reached the Senate, Trump retweeted anti-Muslim videos, and North Ko- rea launched a missile—on that day alone. Was Max the hero we all needed during a terrible news week? What if, libraries + cats + difficult news week = viral You can try it and let us know. Personally, we’ve had enough of viral tweets. Taylor Garrison’s Twitter Post, November 29, 2017.2 C&RL News July/August 2018 352 In order to establish the timeline, we em- barked on an archaeological expedition into the depths of Tumblr, Reddit, and Twitter to track the moments of Max’s virality and see if we could trace it back to Wingo’s original post. We did a reverse Google image search and sifted through 157 duplicate images from all corners of the Internet. We could not trace it back. For we who rely on citation and prov- enance, this digital archaeology experiment was unnerving. Alexis Logsdon spent hours on Twitter giving credit to Schommer and Wingo and putting the context back in the picture. Provenance restored—sort of. But that only solved the smallest of issues. Max still had lessons to teach us about copyright. The original artwork “Upset Cat” is the creation of Gamze Genc Celik.3 She shared it on the Noun Project, a hub for icons and other graphics, under a Creative Commons “By” license. CC BY means that you can use the image as long as you give credit. Schommer chose an open image but did not cite Celik on the sign. Upon the first sniffles of virality, he contacted Celik and told her about her newfound fame. She was under- standing, and in every interview Schom- mer retroactively credited her. Schommer’s mistake is a common one, and honestly no one would have been wiser 15 years ago before there was social media like Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook (or before that sneaky Wingo could snap a quality picture with a telephone). What’s the lesson here, besides don’t be a copycat? Times have changed since we were undergrads. We must model good cita- tion etiquette in everything we do, from our library signage to our presentations. We’re all guilty of omissions like Schommer’s. Imagine, it’s 10:50 a.m. and your class starts in ten minutes. You just put the finishing touches on your PowerPoint. Do all your images have proper citations? Would Kate Turabian be proud? Probably not, but who cares? It’s just a lecture. Wrong. If students see your slides without cita- tion, and yet you dock their final grade because they didn’t cite their sources, then you’re not modeling good behavior—and it matters. It matters more and more in this digital age as students increasingly produce digital classroom projects, digital senior capstones, and digital dissertations.4 Modeling and reinforcing citation eti- quette is essential for ensuring that our work, and that of our students, can go pub- lic—maybe even viral. Below are our three biggest takeaways and questions: 1. Intellectual property. Artwork aside, the sign is a product of Schommer’s intel- lect. It seems obvious that any credit, fame, and monetary benefit belong to Schommer (and perhaps Max’s humans). Except most work produced by staff at Macalester Col- lege’s library belongs to the college. This is a can of worms we’re not that interested in opening, except to say that intellectual property standards at many higher educa- tion institutions are unevenly applied across faculty and staff. This might not seem too significant when we’re talking about a pa- per sign taped to a door. However, when it comes to collaboration (especially on digital humanities projects), staff vulnerability and credit is an important conversation to have up front. If you’re faculty or administra- tion, we encourage you to take Bethany Nowviskie’s advice into consideration: “Give all the credit away. But make it clear to your team that you’ll take any blame.”5 2. The original photograph. As we men- tioned earlier, it is nearly impossible to trace the image back to Wingo’s original post. Even a reverse Google image search will not reveal Wingo’s Twitter or Instagram post, both of which are public. “Finding Wingo” is an exercise in frustration, but a poignant commentary on the Internet culture in which our students find images. Maybe we can translate what we say about Wikipedia to the Google image search: It’s a great place to start, but a horrible place to finish. Students need to know how to do research online, what methods are disci- plinarily acceptable, how to find reputable July/August 2018 353 C&RL News sources, and how to cite them. Librarians and faculty have a large role to play in preparing students to succeed in a world we ourselves were not necessarily trained to master. 3. FanFiction. The Reddit thread about Max the Cat and responses to McGuire’s Twitter post were filled with artwork,6 jew- elry,7 poetry,8 puns,9 rhymes,10 and too many plots to count. If (wittingly or not) Schom- mer is inspired by any of these storylines for his children’s book, what sort of respon- sibility does he have to cite Max’s fans? It is hardly feasible to sift through the thousands of comments a b o u t M a x and search for plotlines that resemble the book. Would a general thank you suffice? W h e n t h e photo of the sign went vi- ral, Max was vaulted from a rambunctious, charming campus character to a revered member of Internet lore. His admission to the Viral Club (it’s inadvisable go to a club with that name, by the way) also revealed some interesting dilemmas regarding copyright, institutional support, our digital habits, and those of our students. Max and his owners have enjoyed his fame, and Max has been busy making ce- lebrity appearances at local bookstores. The real story is a far cry from the hilarious she- nanigans Reddit and Twitter users imagined. As the saying goes, “This is the Internet, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend (but make sure you cite it).” Or something like that. Notes 1. Karin Brulliard, “Meet Max, the cat who lost the library but won the Internet,” The Washington Post. November 30, 2017, accessed May 24, 2018, www.washington- post.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/11/30 /meet-max-the-cat-who-lost-the-library -but-won-the-internet/. Information about the popularity of the article provided by Karin Brulliard, e-mail message to Rebecca S. Wingo, January 2, 2018. 2. Garrison, Taylor, Twitter Post, No- vember 29, 2017, https://twitter.com /taylor_made90/status/936020821113524225. 3. Gamze Genc Celik, “Upset Cat,” The Noun Project, accessed May 24, 2018, https://thenounproject.com/term/upset -cat/1194580/. 4. For more about the first born-digital history disser- tation by Ce- leste Sharpe, s e e K r i t i k a A g a r w a l , “ A H i s t o r y D i s - sertation Goes Digital,” AHA Today, August 28, 2017, ac- cessed May 24, 2018, http:// blog.historians. org/2017/08/a-history-dissertation-goes -digital/. 5. Bethany Nowviskie, “Ten rules for humanities scholars new to project manage- ment,” Scholar’s Lab, 2012, accessed May 24, 2018, http://nowviskie.org/handouts /DH/10rules.pdf. 6. R a c h e l S u z a n n e , T w i t t e r P o s t , December 1, 2017, https://twitter.com /RSillustrations/status/936660514448568320. 7. Jennifer Brooks, Twitter Post, Decem- ber 1, 2017, https://twitter.com/stribrooks /status/936574099140284417. 8. Finn, A Human, Twitter Post, Novem- ber 29, 2017, https://twitter.com/relsqui /status/936004617703272448. 9. Joannie, Twitter Post, November 30, 2017, https://twitter.com/Crittercat1966 /status/936282161874984960. 10. Iain Overton, Twitter Post, Novem- ber 30, 2017, https://twitter.com/iainoverton /status/936257107611078657. Alexis Logsdon, Twitter Post, November 29, 2017. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/11/30 /meet-max-the-cat-who-lost-the-library -but-won-t http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/11/30 /meet-max-the-cat-who-lost-the-library -but-won-t http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/11/30 /meet-max-the-cat-who-lost-the-library -but-won-t http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/11/30 /meet-max-the-cat-who-lost-the-library -but-won-t https://twitter.com/taylor_made90/status/936020821113524225 https://twitter.com/taylor_made90/status/936020821113524225 https://thenounproject.com/term/upset-cat/1194580/ https://thenounproject.com/term/upset-cat/1194580/ http://blog.historians.org/2017/08/a-history-dissertation-goes-digital/ http://blog.historians.org/2017/08/a-history-dissertation-goes-digital/ http://blog.historians.org/2017/08/a-history-dissertation-goes-digital/ http://blog.historians.org/2017/08/a-history-dissertation-goes-digital/ http://nowviskie.org/handouts/DH/10rules.pdf http://nowviskie.org/handouts/DH/10rules.pdf https://twitter.com/RSillustrations/status/936660514448568320 https://twitter.com/RSillustrations/status/936660514448568320 https://twitter.com/stribrooks/status/936574099140284417 https://twitter.com/stribrooks/status/936574099140284417 https://twitter.com/relsqui/status/936004617703272448 https://twitter.com/relsqui/status/936004617703272448 https://twitter.com/Crittercat1966/status/936282161874984960 https://twitter.com/Crittercat1966/status/936282161874984960 https://twitter.com/iainoverton/status/936257107611078657 https://twitter.com/iainoverton/status/936257107611078657