Librarians to Ben & Jerry's: "We Scream for Ice Cream!"

The population of librarians on Facebook has organized as People For a Library-Themed Ben & Jerry’s Flavor and is petitioning Ben & Jerry’s, the Vermont-based ice creamery famous for its multi-flavor mash-ups, for a taste sensation they can call their very own.

Here are some of the current suggestions for a Ben & Jerry’s library-themed flavor:

• Gooey Decimal System: Dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream.

• Sh-sh-sh-Sherbet!: Key Lime or a Chocolate/Vanilla combination.

• Cookie Bookie: A combination of cookie bits!

• Dusty Stacks: Layered ice cream with speckles of cocoa in every layer.

• Li-Berry Pie: Lime sherbet mixed with raspberry sauce and pie crust crumbles (cinnamon sugar, butter, piecrust).

• Liberry I Scream: Strawberry/blueberry sherbet and vanilla ice cream.

• Overdue Fine as Fudge Chunk: Hunks of rich fudge brownies in creamy milk chocolate drizzled throughout with golden caramel and sprinkled with mini white chocolate coins.

• Rocky Read: Vanilla with choc covered nuts choc chunks and raisins.

• In the Stacks: Butter pecan with fudge swirl.

• Reference Ripple: Anything with PB.

• Marian the Librarian Rasberryan: Rasberry and Chocolate with chunks of fudge.

• Ranganathan's Raspberry Rules!: Raspberry and chocolate chips.

• Free and Open to All: A rainbow of flavors with all kinds of chips-butterscotch, peanut butter, chocolate.

Here's a message from the leader of the charge, 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.

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 page.
(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 is a 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.”

This's a pain-free opportunity to support your local library and staff and pack on some extra pounds to carry you through the long winter of our fiscal and budgetary discontent.