Review Detail

I had insight into this campaign, but do not want to disclose the location. I will note what I observed: Libraries were bombarded by Scientologists forcing donations on them. The ones in my area became fed up, as they were forced, as part of accepting the books, to go on camera and be filmed gratefully accepting the books. Many of them became fed up, and rejected the books. Some accepted the books just to get the Scientologists off their backs, and then discarded them later. Both public and staff were hard core pressured to buy sets, which corporate Scientology then passed off as "donations" from Bridge Publications, when in fact, they had been donations from individual staff and public who had paid for them. This was deceptive and dishonest. The normal thing for donations to libraries is for the name of the individual who paid for, or owns the material, to be acknowledged as a donor.

So Bridge Publications and corporate Scientology were claiming credit as being donors, when in fact they were not, but the individuals who paid for them were.

Then, to make matters worse - libraries who were targeted in the campaign were told they had to dispose of any and all existing Scientology books in their collections, and replace them with the new Basics - many libraries did not want to comply with this.

The campaign generated more ill-will, because of all the badgering of libraries and library staff, who are not used to this sort of thing, and the poor public and staff were milked to the bone to buy up sets.

This is a campaign that could have been done so differently, but because of the heavy and harsh enforcement, it went completely south. It ended up as deceptive, a scam, and an epic fail.