I gave a two hour talk and a two hour workshop of sorts at that Manahttan Public Library in Manhattan, Kansas on Monday. It was rally fun and, I think, well received. I got to talk about all sorts of 2.0 stuff including all my favorite nerdy sites and even got to talk about the scrotum dustup from a few days ago. My talk is online here: Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0, and why it’s no big deal, seriously. It’s a big expansion of my previous 2.0-ish talk that that I did at NELA last year. Big thanks to Carol Barta for giving me a cozy place to stay at her house and to Fred and Sue for picking me up at the airport and Linda for organizing it all. Also thanks to Donna for organizing the early morning coffee klatsch in “the room” and to everyone else for coming. I’m not much of a morning person, but I was glad to make an exception. I hope to be back in Kansas at least once or twice more this year.
Tag: mpl
Prompt book return grows out of the barrel of a gun?
MAO and MPL have parted ways, but the new Minneapolis Public Library will opening May 20th with a less edgy but still dramatic ad campaign. Of course MPL.org is actually Milwaukee Public Library, perhaps they can get in a heavy domain name bidding war now.
MAO & MPL & FBI & XOX
Don’t take my words for it, you can check out all of the “edgy” ads for the new Minneapolis Public Library on the Friends of the Library site. Apparently at least the Mao image is on hold for now. I was asked by a reporter, completely seriously, if my objecting to these ads was the same as taking a book off the library shelves because I disagreed with what it said. I assured her that it was not.
Are Mao and Hoover the best you can do to advertise the library
Minneapolis Public Library’s friends group has a new campaign hyping the new library they’ll be opening next year. It features Mao and Hoover, assumedly because they were librarians. There’s an email campaign that finds the “edgy” approach these ads take bordering on offensive. From my inbox:
The Iibrary is supposed to stand for freedom of information, access to all, and democracy. Mao and Hoover are the antithesis of these things – both of them ruined many lives, prevented free speech, and used fear to gain power. Mao killed, tortured and imprisoned thousands of people. Hoover was instrumental in doing surveillance against people during the McCarthy era. He spied on Martin Luther King, and was a bigot, a homophobe, and a racist. In the 60’s, during the Berrigan brothers’ trial he even had a real librarian imprisoned because she refused to testify against them! Why then, use these people’s images – at all- when there’s so many better people to pick from?