Thursday, July 30, 2009

Ginny's Timeline of "Oppression" and "Covert Involvement" of Evil Outsiders

Readers here know I've been collecting resources to help make sense of this library mess (see here and here).

According to her new website, it appears Ginny Maziarka is creating a timeline of her own. This page makes the following announcement (emphasis added):
TIMELINE OF EVENTS

A current timeline of events from February 1, 2009 to present will be available soon.

This TIMELINE will confirm the covert involvement of national organizations to oppress small communities, undermining community standards and pushing the liberal agenda of the American Library Association.

Open Records Requests will be available at the above website hosting the timeline.
For those still catching up, Ginny has long criticized people from outside West Bend for improperly (in her view) involving themselves in this library controversy. When the UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies (the only local school for librarians) issued a statement of support, Ginny derided them (channeling Dan Kleinman). When the ALA's Deborah Caldwell-Stone made an appearance to support the library, Ginny was quick to criticize her presence.

Ginny's recent ORR request seems to be an attempt to show (GASP) that the librarians and library board members consulted with the ALA and other professionals more versed in dealing with complicated and controversial challenges. This timeline, apparently, will reveal these communications. Only Ginny would view these consultations as "covert" and "oppressive", as opposed to people simply looking for guidance when confronted with unique circumstances.

Two additional notes:

One, while Ginny seems to think that this issue should only be dealt with locally, and without any outside influence, she welcomes the involvement of Dan Kleinman, the headmaster of the New Jersey-based SafeLibraries organization, as well as Mark Belling, also not a citizen of West Bend. I've grown tired of pointing out Ginny's hypocrisies, but here you go...

Two, an anonymous source requested access to Ginny's timeline (the project page is here), and received an e-mail from both Ginny Maziarka & Dan Kleinman (again, an outsider in New Jersey is intimately involved in Ginny's crusade). Interestingly, Kleinman characterized the purpose of the timeline as such (excerpted from an email to that person; emphasis added):
We believe an accurate presentment of the facts is the best way to present the facts. Therefore, a partially completely time line is not appropriate for public release.

We intend it to present just the facts, leaving any possible argument to be decided in other fora, such as personal blogs, etc. We intend that the edits made are relevant to the facts and are not filled with personal diatribe. We will also disclose all editors names and affiliations -- anonymous or pseudonymous editors will not be accepted.

We intend to let anyone edit it, so long as vandalism and self-promotion is not involved. In other words, we intend to allow people from all sides edit it.

We are certain that no similar time line has even been produced in any other public library matter and that our time line will be heavily used by the general public and by academic institutions, relatively speaking. It will definitely be used by issue participants to make arguments one way or another.

Thanks again for your interest. We will try to open it to public view as soon as possible. So I will make an effort to email you again when the time line is publicly available, and if you wish to edit it as well, please let us know. If you have any exhibits or other information to submit, please let us know as well.
That actually sounds like it might be a reasoned, unbiased approach. Contrast this explanation with Ginny's rhetoric of "confirm the covert involvement of national organizations to oppress small communities, undermining community standards and pushing the liberal agenda of the American Library Association".

Which will it be? I'm holding my breath in anticipation....

5 comments:

  1. Covert? At least she's good for a laugh.

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  2. Thought you'd be interested- there is a story on onenewsnow.com about the library. It's called," Wisconsin mom fights for wholesome library books." Its on the front page. ( My computer wont let me paste it.) Ginny mentions a possible referendum.

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  3. Saw that, too. ONN is part of the American Family Association.

    Push for referrendum doesn't surprise me, albeit misguided.

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  4. "That actually sounds like it might be a reasoned, unbiased approach."

    Thank you! You see? We *can* get along after all!

    Regarding Ginny's statements, she is not describing the time line we are building. She is describing, I surmise, what she will say on her own blog using the facts as fairly presented by the time line. I see nothing wrong with that. Indeed, as I said, I expect the time line will aid the efforts of everyone to make arguments from their own points of view.

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  5. I just noticed this blog post contains links to the time lines of others or other pages linking to time lines. I'll make an effort to incorporate any factual content so we are all talking off the same page, so to speak.

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