Ben & Jerry's is considering launching a library-themed ice-cream flavour, after a campaign by a New Jersey librarian gathered thousands of supporters.
Burlington county librarian Andy Woodworth already has more than 4,400 people signed up to a Facebook group supporting his plan, which he hopes will raise awareness of libraries "in the face of stagnant or slashed state, county, and municipal budgets".
Suggestions for flavours range from Gooey Decimal System to Sh-sh-sh-sherbet. Woodworth writes on Facebook that the logic behind the scheme is that "libraries are awesome, Ben & Jerry's ice-cream is tasty, therefore a library-themed Ben & Jerry's ice-cream would be tasty awesome".
Gooey Decimal System could combine dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice-cream, he suggests, while Dusty Stacks could be a layered ice-cream with speckles of cocoa in every layer. Li-Berry pie could mix lime sherbet with raspberry sauce and pie-crust pieces, and Overdue Fine as Fudge Chunk could drop fudge brownies and white chocolate coins into milk chocolate ice-cream swirled with caramel. The fine details of Sh-sh-sh-sherbet aren't pinned down quite yet – it could be key lime, or possibly a vanilla/chocolate combination.
Arnold Carbone, Ben & Jerry's flavour guru, said the company had honoured musicians with its flavours in the past – last year it launched Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road (chocolate ice-cream with peanut butter cookie dough, butter brickle and white chocolate chunks) for Elton John – so a library-themed flavour was a definite possibility.
"From Cherry Garcia to Bohemian Raspberry, some of our best-loved flavours have been fan suggestions. We've honoured rock'n'roll icons, so why not librarians?" said Carbone.
He suggested a Malt Whitman: "a malt ice-cream, with chocolate alphabet letters and two decadent rivulets - one caramel and one fudge - as an ode to writer Walt Whitman". If Ben & Jerry's went ahead with the flavour, it would be the latest in a stream of recent endorsements for America's first "poet of democracy". Whitman is currently starring in a Levi's commercial, has been selected for Jonathan Ross's new Twitter book club, and is the author of JK Rowling's favourite poem, Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances.