Quoting Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_AUR.EDU>:
> I think an emphasis on ethics will make more of an impression on the
> public than librarians may think. When I have told my info-lit
> classes that I will suggest databases for them to use, BUT if it
> turned out I was making 5 or 10 euros from every person I could get
> to access, e.g. Lexis-Nexis, they might be more skeptical of my
> suggestions, but they don't have to worry about that because I am a
> librarian. I compare that to Google's "Don't be evil", or McDonald's
> "We do it all for you", then wonder if anybody out there really
> believes any of that, and we all wind up having a good laugh. This
> is something that people have no trouble understanding and, I think,
> appreciating.
Do people know this about us, though? If we are to fight the battle on
our ethics, we need to make sure that people know what they are. In
fact, we might need a good slogan. I recently bought some books at
Blackwell's in the UK, and love their bag, which reads: "Blackwells.
The knowledge retailer." Brilliant.
What could we say that would be short, catchy, and would get across
what the library is? (including its ethics). Oh, and we'd need some
good t-shirts. When Kramer Books in Washington, DC was subpoenaed
around the Monica/Bill case, they produced a t-shirt that read:
"Kramer Books: subpoenaed for selling books."
Another seed: the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom briefly (too
briefly!) had bumperstickers that read: "Free People Read Freely" with
a hint of the Statue of Liberty. This should have been plastered
everywhere in library land, but instead it was hard to find.
kc
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Fri Dec 17 2010 - 10:14:26 EST