Show ‘Em You Care With An Ice Cream Flavor and More

In case you’ve been in Casablanca or otherwise out of the librarian loop this summer (or not on facebook), you might not know about the Facebook Group People for a library-themed Ben & Jerry’s flavor! But now you do know about it and there’s been a ‘call to action’!

Here’s a message from the leader of the charge and new LISNews author Andy W, on the group’s facebook page:

“4,000. It took awhile but we got there. Completely awesome. This past month and a half has been pretty different for me. Stories about the group have appeared in Library Journal (both print and online), a local newspaper, tons of tweet and retweets on Twitter, and shared on Facebook. And for all those efforts, I cannot thank you enough. I am planning this to be the penultimate message, with the last message being one announce success =D

So, here’s the deal now. Time to step it up and take some action in a couple easy steps.

(1) Submit a flavor to Ben & Jerry’s directly.
Appeal to the 5 Flavor Gurus directly! (Arnold, John, Eric, Peter, & Nettie) Here is the link for their Suggest a Flavor form.
And here are a couple of the flavors, easy to cut & paste into the form. Pick one and submit (or submit one of your own).

a) Name: Gooey Decimal System (birdie’s recommendation)

In case you’ve been in Casablanca or otherwise out of the librarian loop this summer (or not on facebook), you might not know about the Facebook Group People for a library-themed Ben & Jerry’s flavor! But now you do know about it and there’s been a ‘call to action’!

Here’s a message from the leader of the charge and new LISNews author Andy W, on the group’s facebook page:

“4,000. It took awhile but we got there. Completely awesome. This past month and a half has been pretty different for me. Stories about the group have appeared in Library Journal (both print and online), a local newspaper, tons of tweet and retweets on Twitter, and shared on Facebook. And for all those efforts, I cannot thank you enough. I am planning this to be the penultimate message, with the last message being one announce success =D

So, here’s the deal now. Time to step it up and take some action in a couple easy steps.

(1) Submit a flavor to Ben & Jerry’s directly.
Appeal to the 5 Flavor Gurus directly! (Arnold, John, Eric, Peter, & Nettie) Here is the link for their Suggest a Flavor form.
And here are a couple of the flavors, easy to cut & paste into the form. Pick one and submit (or submit one of your own).

a) Name: Gooey Decimal System (birdie’s recommendation)
Flavor: Dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream.
b) Name: Li-Berry Pie
Flavor: Lime sherbet mixed with raspberry sauce and pie crust crumbles (cinnamon sugar, butter, piecrust)
c) Name: Free and Open to All
Flavor: A rainbow of flavors with all kinds of chips-butterscotch, peanut butter, chocolate

(2) Get involved at your state level. Library advocacy has been a hot button issue for the library community this year in light of how state budgets are shaping up. We need to demonstrate why libraries are not a luxury but an essential service in an age of digital literacy.

Here are the list of state library associations as provided by ilovelibraries.org. If you’re involved already, thank you for your time and effort. If you’re not, here’s a chance to check it out, find your local legislators and let them know how important the library is.

(3) Vote.

On a lighter note (and since Facebook doesn’t allow polls), I’ve set up my own scaled down version of Kitchen Stadium (or, for more apocalyptic folks, Flavor Thunderdome) on my blog. So, if you want to vote for which flavor that library folks savor here’s the link.

So, vote for the one that you think is most fun.

Thanks once again. And good luck to everyone.”

Andy W.