I love ethics in libraries! Partially this is because a lot of what the profession stands for (equitable access, intellectual freedom, and, for heavens' sakes, treating coworkers with respect), I also stand for - most of library ethics is preaching to the choir where I am concerned. However, the ethics of information is one thing in theory and another thing entirely in practice. For me, this comes through particularly clearly in collection maintenance and development (what you buy, what you keep, and what you weed). The ALA Code of Ethics states that, "We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties
and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair
representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of
access to their information resources." It may be a stretch to connect this to the value judgements we make when weeding or purchasing, but I do think that there is a fine line between personal judgement and professional duties when engaging in collection maintenance. Our professional estimation of a work is colored by our personal experience, and in some cases (such as discarding rid of older books with problematic gender/race/class/sexual orientation depictions) personal judgements of what is and is not appropriate by today's standards play a role. This is not to say, however, that personal taste should play a role in what you purchase or keep; your personal distaste for western novels does not free you from the obligation to purchase them if your patrons want to read them.
Last week I had the opportunity to work with 826NYC, where I was faced with getting rid of a lot of books that were outdated or which did not suit the collection. Many of the weeded books were clear candidates for weeding and still, every time I decided to get rid of something, that was a value judgement. It was a value judgement informed by all that I know about quality of books, and what is likely to be read by the library's users, but still- a value judgement. I was thankful that I had colleagues to check my work and either agree with it or reconsider- it lessened the chances of me stepping beyond the bounds of the professional into the personal. Also related to the personal/professional issues, it is interesting to note that the ALA, like it or not, is heavily involved in deciding which information resources are better than others in the form of quite major book awards (Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, etc.) I do believe that awards committees do their utmost to avoid personal opinion, but still...we are human.
Last week I had the opportunity to work with 826NYC, where I was faced with getting rid of a lot of books that were outdated or which did not suit the collection. Many of the weeded books were clear candidates for weeding and still, every time I decided to get rid of something, that was a value judgement. It was a value judgement informed by all that I know about quality of books, and what is likely to be read by the library's users, but still- a value judgement. I was thankful that I had colleagues to check my work and either agree with it or reconsider- it lessened the chances of me stepping beyond the bounds of the professional into the personal. Also related to the personal/professional issues, it is interesting to note that the ALA, like it or not, is heavily involved in deciding which information resources are better than others in the form of quite major book awards (Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, etc.) I do believe that awards committees do their utmost to avoid personal opinion, but still...we are human.
I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Lenker's article about dangerous questions at the reference desk, and his approach of virtue ethics in solving those dangerous questions. He advocates for paying attention to the details of a situation, figuring out which virtues are at play in the situation, and then reacting based on which virtues are most important to express in the given situation. I appreciate the flexibility of this approach and the fact that it gives a framework within which to work, but not answers. However, I do wonder about how much practice at virtue ethics one would need in order to reason on the fly when faced with a challenging ethical question while on the desk. Beyond that, I will leave further discussion for class since while I enjoy library ethics it has been a while since I read philosophy, and I'd like to discuss the article before commenting on it further.
I think it's is very astute on your part to consider collection development and maintenance through the ethical lens. Being here at the University of Michigan, with its very well funded libraries, it is to forget that the decision of developing a collection can have ethical implications. If we want to provide universal access, then having the materials that patrons want to access is part of that service. But who decides what we collect? By considering this question ethically, I think we have a better chance of providing universal access.
ReplyDeleteThere as been discussion about the Code of Ethics as an outward-facing document, and I think the fact that there is so much grey area involved in some of its statements supports that idea. Of course we want to be as impartial as possible, and we want others to think of us as impartial, but when it comes to practice, we need more than just a very broadly-worded ideal.
ReplyDeleteI think it's valuable to be aware of our place as librarians who are tasked with responsibilities that very often rely on value judgments. Clearly there is no way to remove all potential biases from our decision-making processes, but just by being aware of how we're implicit in the curation of our collection and sources offered we show that we are capable of being mindful. It was interesting, in the research for the webinar Krista and I put on, how many librarians though will admit to self-censoring materials based upon personal preference/values/etc, or even just based upon the potential backlash they see as being connected to certain kinds of resources (and perhaps by interesting, I really mean a little sad).
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