For a REALLY good time, take a look at Mackay on Quoz (from the absolutely essential Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and theMadness of Crowds --start at the fourth paragraph...)
introduction to Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie
Memetic Lexicon from Principia Cybernetica
MEMETIC SCIENCE : I - GENERAL INTRODUCTION
(Elan Moritz,
The Institute For Memetic Research)
Units, Events and Dynamics in Memetic Evolution
(Aaron Lynch)
A Preliminary Taxonomy of Memetic Viruses
The Evolving Research Library:
A Memetic View (in Susan Lee, ed.,
The New Library Legacy: Essays in Honor of Richard De Gennaro [1998]; by
John Kupersmith --worthwhile collection of links, but not the text of his article in an expensive book)
The concept of memetics is a useful tool for understanding these changes. This theory holds that ideas, in effect, have a life of their own. A "meme" tends to survive and proliferate if it contributes to the fitness of the individual and the group, if it proves to be reliable, if it is easily learned and transmitted, and if it encourages its "carriers" to behave in self-reinforcing ways.
In this sense, the meme of the research library has undergone a number of fundamental changes since the 1960s, changes which have become widely institutionalized. These include transitions in the perceived business of libraries, in the way libraries do business, and in the role of staff and their relationship to users. With the growth of the Internet and the proliferation of distributed information systems, new memes are emerging to compete with that of the research library. The question of what will emerge from this competition hinges not only on technology and economics, but also on people's perceptions and values regarding these functions and institutions.
What are some examples of memes? Common examples include ideas, tunes, fashions, and virtually any cultural and behavioral unit that gets copied with a certain degree of fidelity. Photo-copied documents (Xerox copies) are prime examples in [modern culture] of embodiments of meme replication. Chain letters, prayers, slogans and jokes, are other (mass replicated) embodiments of memes. An example of an extremely potent electronic meme is the computer-virus.
In the past four decades, with the introduction of new technologies into research libraries, there has been a profound shift in the commonly accepted idea of what a library can and should be, and what librarians can and should do.