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a video on social media set to a Fatboy Slim song and used as a book promo for Eric Qualman's new book Socialnomics (Wiley)

...thanks to Andy W. for the tip

A New Jersey librarian's (LISNews' VERY OWN ANDY W!!!) lighthearted Facebook petition for a Ben & Jerry's library-themed ice cream flavor might just come to fruition -- or should that be chocolate-swirl-ition? Launched in early June, the petition has picked up momentum as summer temperatures have risen -- there are currently more than 4,800 members in the group, and folks from as far away as Canada and England have volunteered flavor ideas. If you haven't joined the facebook group yet...DO IT NOW!

Suggestions included Gooey Decimal System (dark chocolate alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream), Rocky Read (vanilla with chocolate-covered nuts, chocolate chunks and raisins) and Sh-sh-sh-Sherbet! (either lime or chocolate/vanilla).

But, like an autodidact left free to roam the stacks, later ideas have strayed from the original to embrace anything bookish, related to authors or reading or titles.

More from the LA Times Blog.

[Kudos to Andy! He's most likely a dynamite librarian, but he's also got the right stuff for marketing. Libraries need that, now more than ever.]

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)

An appellate court has reversed a lower court decision that had exonerated Simon & Schuster of breaking federal telecommunications law when it sent cellphone text messages to promote the novel “Cell,” written by Stephen King, three years ago.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled on Friday that the United States District Court for the Northern District of California had erred in its ruling in Simon & Schuster’s favor in a class-action suit brought by Laci Satterfield, a woman who objected to receiving an ad for “Cell” as a text message.

More from the New York Times.

...called Geek the Library.

Geek the Library is a community-based public awareness campaign designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries for individuals and communities, and raise awareness about the critical funding issues they (we) face.

Tons of cool imagery and resources for 'getting your geek on'.

USA Today begins it's report about a new courtesy to hotel guests as follows: "Electronic reading devices are kindling hotel guests' interest."

Last month, the three Gansevoort hotels — in Manhattan, South Beach and the Turks & Caicos islands — began lending Sony Reader Digital Books, handheld devices that allow users to peruse downloaded literature.

Meanwhile, popular Kindle readers are a hit at Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel and a good fit with its literary pedigree. Its Kindles are loaded with a variety of books, including some written by members of the venerable Algonquin Round Table, such as Edna Ferber and Robert Benchley.

Is it the same as stumbling upon shelf upon shelf of old wonderful looking books with a surprise or first edition here or there? No, but for some, it's as good or maybe better.

Twitter’s co-founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, kicked off this year’s D: All Things Digital conference, run by The Wall Street Journal.

Twitter founders said they did not want to sell the company and saw themselves running it five years from now. “We’re building Twitter and building an innovative company,” Mr. Stone said. “We are 100 percent into Twitter.” Mr. Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, said he was modeling the firm after Microsoft and Apple and was willing to navigate tough times to build a long-term business.

The pair endorsed a few options, like giving companies and heavy users enhanced features for a fee. This could include charging them to get introductions to new followers. The founders also suggested that for a fee they would embrace the challenge of trying to authenticate a company or person’s identity (...as in "is 'Dunkin' Donuts' the Dunkin' Donuts"?).

Libraries Need to Think More Like Trent Reznor:
The challenge is that some librarians may actually feel that it is the role of academic libraries to provide lowest-margin-of-return services since those are the ones our communities say they need. Instead, I feel that librarians need to begin identifying our added value services. What are the premium packages and the limited addition services which we can provide to support our communities? How can we create a new organizational models to support these services and the Reasons to Use?

We're smack in the middle of National Library Week, an occasion that Wallet Pop thinks is appropriate for giving your librarian a kiss (or other acknowledgment).

Across the nation, libraries are holding special events to remind people that even in this age of the Internet, libraries are still relevant.

One activity that I particularly like and can get behind is the concept of "Fine Free Days." The Craft Memorial Library in Bluefield, WV is allowing patrons to return overdue videos and books from now until the end of the month without being charged.

The Charles J. Keffer Library in Minneapolis is hosting a mini golf tournament on the campus of the University of Minnesota at 4 p.m. on Thursday.

In Indianapolis, Conner Prairie, a very cool historic village is giving visitors a $3 discount in honor of National Library Week.

And -- well, you get the idea. Things are happening. Wherever you live and read, your library is bound to be doing something special and free (and, boy, do we all like free), such as hosting a crafts fair or a story-telling event or showing a kids' movie.

The San Francisco Public Library will start handing out unlaminated corn "EcoCards", though you'll still have the option of old-fangled plastic.

Our landfills are not overflowing with plastic library cards -- San Franciscans are neither that literate nor wasteful -- but, in an effort to be more environmentally responsible the library will next month kick off a test program featuring a run of 15,000 corn cards (the library usually hands out 60,000 cards yearly, so these may last a little while).

Fans of plastic need not despair -- you'll still have the option of getting regular cards (mine, says Joe Eskenazi, has crayon lightning drawn on it and was designed by a fourth-grader named Wing). But, if you agree to answer a few question over the next six months or so, the librarian will hand you the rather nondescript corn card. "We want to know how it works in your wallet and what happens if it gets wet," says library spokeswoman of six months, Michelle Jeffers ([email protected]).

A temporary license plate with a smiling President Barack Obama will have things looking up for Illinois libraries.

Proceeds from the $50.00 set of plates, which are good from Tuesday through April 17 for vehicle registration, will benefit the Illinois Library Association, including IREAD, the state's summer reading program.

Want one? Here's how.

Tom Peters, "Barnacles on the Ship of Librarianship:"

In the past two years or so, however, as I thought about the state of librarianship, a wild and crazy idea keeps surfacing: What if libraries themselves are unnecessarily retarding the progress of librarianship? What if they have become barnacles on the ship of librarianship?

cnet's Rafe Needleman hosts a blog outside his day job called "Pro PR Tips". For smaller libraries without their own press liaisons, Needleman's blog provides a variety of tips with some explanation as to how such is received on the press side. Sometimes biting, sometimes sarcastic, Needleman's posts provide unique looks at the pet peeves of journalists when involved in a public relations transaction showing things to avoid.

AP reports: The Milwaukee Public Library has been chosen to host a national traveling exhibit on baseball's Negro Leagues.

"Pride and Passion: The African-American Baseball Experience" will tour libraries from July 22 through Sept. 4.

The Milwaukee Public Library is one of 25 libraries nationwide chosen to host the exhibit, which treats baseball as a reflection of U.S. race relations. Details on the grant that funded the exhibit from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Adrants Points To a series of ads for The Alberta Library which tells us just how powerful informative and motivational books can be. Aiming to show just how much influence a book can have on a person's life, both positively and negatively, four scenarios are played out to humorous effect.

Today in the New York Times:

Publishers, authors and even libraries are embracing video games to promote books to young readers.

When PJ Haarsma wrote his first book, a science fiction novel for preteenagers, he didn’t think just about how to describe Orbis, the planetary system where the story takes place. He also thought about how it should look and feel in a video game.

The online game that Mr. Haarsma designed not only extends the fictional world of the novel, it also allows readers to play in it. At the same time, Mr. Haarsma very calculatedly gave gamers who might not otherwise pick up a book a clear incentive to read: one way that players advance is by answering questions with information from the novel.

“You can’t just make a book anymore,” said Mr. Haarsma, a former advertising consultant. Pairing a video game with a novel for young readers, he added, “brings the book into their world, as opposed to going the other way around.”

Full article here.

Returning checked out library books in Beaumount could net a $100 gas card, according to a news release.

In the "Bring them Back and Get Gas" program, patrons must return borrowed books and other materials inside the library. Those returned in the book drops won't count to-ward the prize.

From Shelf-Awareness today: Among the many volunteer readers, Matt Phillips, a librarian at the Twin Hickory Public Library, Glen Allen, VA and his daughter Sydney read Where's Waldo by Martin Handford (No. 88 on the ALA's top 100 banned and challenged books 1990-2000) in the library's Banned Books Weeks window. Adrienne Minock, teen librarian at Twin Hickory, wrote that the window has "gotten a lot of attention. We hear a lot of 'Mom, what are those people doing in there?' The best part has been hearing parents explain to their kids what the display is all about, which is exactly what we wanted to happen!"