ethics
By - Sunday, March 6, 2011 - 12:19pm
I have a very early memory – I couldn’t have been much more than 5 years old or so – of asking my mother to buy me Nestle Quik. “Nestle kills babies. We don’t buy from them.” she replied. End of discussion. (As an aside, I apparently have a reputation amongst my friends as being rather, shall we say, straight forward and direct. All I can say is, “you should really meet my mother sometime.” Heh.) Anyway, except for the occasional Crunch bar, no nestle product crossed my lips while I lived under her roof. I’m not sure that I’ve ever had Nestle Quik now that I think about it.
During Apartheid in South Africa I refused to drink Coca-cola. Really, once you start consuming consciously, it’s hard to stop. There was a period there in my teen years that I carried around a little guide book called “Shopping for a Better Planet” or some such thing like that and double checked my purchases. That wasn’t just youthful idealism, by the way… I still vote with my wallet.
- I don’t wear certain brands of shoes because they’re unrepentantly made by 9 year olds in sweatshops.
- I don’t buy certain store brands because they are unfair to farm labor.
- I’ve been driving on past BP gas stations ever since this summer’s gulf oil spill.
- Um, okay, I admit to still shopping at Walmart. Listen, you can take the girl out of Appalachia….
I’m not telling you this to prove I’m a good person. Because believe me, I’m not. I’ve got more skeletons in my closet than Ted Haggard could find pearls to clutch. Nor am I trying to prove my radical bona fides. I don’t worry overmuch about the opinion of others anymore and the older I get, the more I think that the most radical thing a person can do is join the system and change it from within instead of constantly complaining and agitating.
I really wish I was telling you this because my actions helped end Apartheid. Or rehydrated those babies. Or closed those sweatshops. But they didn’t. They don’t. They won’t. This isn’t the Montgomery Bus Boycott where 75% of the riders participated. This is just me. Just me. And the amount I spend on sneakers each year would buy me just about one share of Nike stock.
So why do I bother?
Because even though I’m not part of the solution, I’m not part of the problem. And that little bit is enough. For me, anyway. And on those rare occasions when my shopping habits come up, or someone offers to give me some pirated media, or I refuse to accept vendor swag, I have an opportunity to educate others about issues I care about. Maybe they join in. And do the same. And maybe soon 75% of Nike’s customer base disappears.
Crazier things have happened.
I received a very thoughtful and persuasive email this weekend from a boycott supporter encouraging me to change my stand on the boycott. I still feel like an intruder in these conversations and no one was more surprised than I that my original HCOD math blog post took off like it did. I almost didn’t post it because it was more or less just me thinking out-loud. Hmmm. I wonder how much public libraries really do contribute to the publishing industry bottom line? Oh. That is much less than I thought. Much less. Bummer. A boycott probably is not going to work in this area of libraries either. Back to square one of figuring out solutions, I guess. But, in my tradition of practicing open-notebook science with this blog, I figured that I may as well post it and see if anyone had corrections that would educate me. (And they did. Turns out their numbers were even less than mine.) Who knew that so many people would pay attention to admittedly inaccurate numbers from someone with no first hand knowledge of how public libraries actually work?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I still don’t think a boycott will really impact Harper Collins to a noticeable economic degree. Nor do I think that even if it did (or the political pressure of being mean to libraries becomes a public relations disaster), a “win” of removing the 26 checkout limit would still leave libraries with licensing agreements and eBook format conflicts that are not in their long-term best interest. Nor do I understand why a boycott is limited to Harper Collins…OverDrive seems like it would be a better tactical target for many reasons.
Furthermore, I still think a boycott is overly confrontational at this stage of the game, the eReader User Bill of Rights doesn’t go far enough, and I do think there’s a great danger in “Boycott Harper Collins” becoming about as effectual as people slapping a magnetic ribbon on their car. So if nothing has changed, why am I writing about it again? Well, for one thing, because I could be entirely wrong. Especially because I could be entirely wrong. Like I said, this was a pretty persuasive email written by someone who is much more in the know about these sorts of things than I am. They had many facts and figures showing how a boycott could be effective. While I am quick to roll my eyes at people who seemingly exist to amp up drama and bring obnoxious rhetoric into a discussion that should remain professional, I believe that many who are making the decision to boycott don’t fall into this camp. They are doing so after a long and thoughtful consideration of all the facts and I respect their decision.
Like I said, these facts didn’t convince me, but ultimately, I don’t really have to be convinced. I don’t make purchasing decisions for my library, not that my library uses OverDrive or purchases Harper Collins titles anyway. I don’t actually purchase that many books for my personal use either. I’m not even a fan of Harper Collins’ prize winning author Neil Gaiman. (No, not even Sandman. I know, I know… I tried to like it, I swear!) And I’m really not trying to convince you, Gentle Reader, one way or another what to do with regards to this boycott.
I’m writing about this again – even though I swore I was done – because of one thing that the writer said that absolutely chilled me to the bone. The email posited that librarians were hesitant to join the boycott because it wasn’t a 100% guaranteed win and didn’t solve all the problems with libraries and eBooks. That this was yet another libraryland case of perfect being the enemy of good.
Oh, man, the fear of failure in libraryland is a major burr under my saddle.
My mentor in law school had a framed poster of a quote from Teddy Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech hanging in his office. It’s one of my most favorite quotes ever.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
I spent many a sad hour staring at that quote, trying to take it’s message to heart. For those of you have never had the pleasure of attending, law school is primarily about failing. Over and over again. You get knocked down and then pick yourself back up just so you can have someone kick your ass again the next day. Lather, rinse, repeat. For three years. Now that I’m a professor, I keep a copy hanging on the wall of my office, both to serve as inspiration to my students and to constantly remind myself that there’s nothing wrong with failing.
That’s true, you know… Failure is never fun but it’s also not the end of the world. The more you do it, the easier it gets. And each time you do it, you learn something new and make your efforts better for the next go-around.
Maybe the Harper Collins boycott is a bad idea. Maybe it’s a good idea. I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that it’s an idea. If it works it works and if it doesn’t, well… then we all know in the future that a boycott is not a viable option.
Join the boycott if you want to. Don’t if you don’t. Do what your personal beliefs tell you is right thing to do. If you can sleep well at night knowing that you spent your libraries’ funds on Harper Collins eBooks, that’s between you and yours. I certainly hold no judgment either way. And you can be angry if you want to as well. But then you must also get active. And whatever you do, don’t sit around waiting for the perfect solution to land our laps before you decide to get involved.
Know this: no matter what, a boycott of Harper Collins will never be enough to solve all problems libraries face when it comes to eResources. When it fails – it could be an if, but I’m pretty sure it’s a when – don’t you be personally defeated. Pick yourself up and then try something new. Learn from your mistakes. Take the energy and allies you’ve gained in this effort and apply it elsewhere. Work to find other solutions. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Harper Collins is just one cog in a huge machine that we need to fix. The only way it will NEVER get fixed is if we all sit on our hands and do nothing.
By - Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 4:05pm
Last July, while traveling home from the AALL Annual Meeting, I had a layover in St. Louis. During this travel break I checked Twitter from my phone to see if anything conference-related had happened while I was in the air. Well, the best I could find was a vendor who had used a hashtag that some of my friends and I had used to identify our clique that week. In response, someone used the anonymous @aallsecrets account to criticize the vendor for co-opting "our" identifier, and I quickly fired off a couple tweets of my own belittling the vendor, even calling him a not-so-nice name. By then it was time to board my flight to Los Angeles, so I turned off my phone and forgot all about it.
While waiting for my luggage at LAX a few hours later, I checked Twitter again. My name-calling hadn't gone over so well. Someone called me out for rudeness from the @aallsecrets account, while the vendor in question explained that he used the hashtag as a way of inviting all of us to a party that evening, something I might have realized had I bothered to pay much attention to the content of his tweet. Nevertheless, I was angry at being called out. While crafting what I thought was a witty 140-character evisceration of anyone who disagreed with me, my phone battery died, leaving me unable to crush all opposition.
Before I could publish this brief manifesto, I discovered the airport police had towed my car from the long-term lot. By the time I made it home several hours later, my self-imagined feud with this vendor felt absurd, and I was ashamed of what I'd said. So when I did finally power up my laptop and return the internet, the first thing I did was email an apology to the vendor.
That episode of name-calling wasn't the first time I'd used the web to express self-righteous anger. By then it had become something of an art form for me. Any time I disagreed with someone, it was easier to tweet something inflammatory (and passive aggressive) than to communicate directly with the person I imagined I was feuding with. In the best of possible worlds, I'd raise an issue in the most condescending tone I could muster and start a revolution of re-tweets and replies that carried my message well beyond my own meager reach.
In the days following the namecalling incident, I decided I had some growing up to do and promised myself I'd stop making everything so personal in my communication with colleagues and vendors. Anger would not be my defining emotion and hyperbole would not be my preferred writing style.
My record since then has been spotty, but improved. I've only made a handful of passive aggressive tweets about AALL (one of my biggest targets in those heady pre-AALL 2009 days) in the months since, and I believe my blog writing since last summer has become more measured and logical than it was in the past.
But I'm troubled by the overall tone of our profession's communication of late. Now, flame wars are nothing new. The law-lib listserv has seen more than a few blow ups between librarians with differing opinions over the years, and Twitter might be unrecognizable without its piles of overreaction. (Just ask Scott Baio.) Nevertheless, I don't always understand the motivations of librarians who attack one another on a personal level and generalize vendors as evil empires with illegal intent. (Yes, any statement that a vendor is trying to bribe a state employee is an accusation of criminal behavior.)
The last week has seen some intense debate regarding vendor swag and librarian ethics. One need look no farther than the comments to any of Sarah Glassmeyer's posts on the subject (here, here, here and here) to see that there is a wide array of opinions on the matter and that we have no hesitation in challenging the moral integrity of one another in the process. Those that disagree with us are labeled "biased" and "trolls" rather than just a person with a different opinion. Exaggerated conflagrations become the norm on Twitter, with educated and influential legal information professionals questioning the character of our entire profession while providing no concrete evidence of our moral decay. And when an alleged employee of Thomson Reuters Legal (TRL), the grand villain in the eyes of so many librarians, posts a comment defending the company's marketing strategy without identifying herself as a TRL employee, there is an automatic assumption of so-called "sock-puppetry," with no consideration that the alleged employee might like her place of work and decide on her own to defend it. Instead, we feel compelled to unmask her treacherous ways in the most humiliating manner possible with no concern that we might put her job in jeopardy. (Never mind that IP addresses can be spoofed.)
There is, of course, the possibility that the commenter was a sock-puppet, and that's a troubling possibility that deserves investigation. As do many of the ethical questions raised in the last week.
But within the social media wing of our profession, vendor hatred has become a badge of honor. On the announcement of new products, sight unseen, we state publicly our suspicions that vendors designed such products to increase profits at the expense of effective research, never considering for a moment that maybe those two ends aren't always in conflict.
The inflammatory rhetoric lobbed at TRL, LexisNexis and others is sometimes well-grounded, but we've reached a tipping point where any opinion short of "West sucks!" is dismissed by many. We become outraged when a vendor attempts to bypass us in their marketing, as West did with a promotional email last year. Yet if vendors talked about librarians the way librarians talk about vendors, we would be up in arms.
I understand a great deal of the anger. I find myself regularly frustrated by the decisions made by many vendors, be they marketing, pricing or design decisions. But at the end of the day, we still have to work with these vendors. We have contracts to negotiate, products to vet and dollars to allocate. Sometimes the products are good, sometimes they aren't. (More accurately, sometimes parts of a single product are good while other parts of the very same product are bad.) Sometimes we are charged too much, sometimes we aren't. Sometimes we buy the product, sometimes we don't.
But we also have choices in how we respond to our anger, even the most justifiable anger. What law librarian interest is served in publicly shaming a vendor over a disagreement?
Society loves its villains. Tiger Woods can vouch for that. So can NBC. But what did Conan O'Brien accomplish by announcing via press release his rejection of NBC's time slot change other than winning public opinion? As much as I support Conan's decision to walk away from "The Tonight Show," I can't help but notice that even after the press release, he still lost his job and the jobs of his staffers and faced a contentious negotiation with the executives at NBC. Maybe if he had called Jeff Zucker and privately said, "No thanks, Jeff," instead of speaking to the "People of Earth" he might have obtained better severance packages for his staff, a larger payout for himself, a shorter non-compete period and the rights to some of his show's recurring characters. Perhaps not.
Intelligent people can disagree on just about anything, yet they can do so in a civilized manner. That's the kind of career I signed on for seven years ago when I decided to become a librarian. Since then I've been something less than perfect in that regard, but I'm trying. And when I arrive in Denver this July for the AALL Annual Meeting, one of the first things I'll do is buy a beer for the vendor I insulted last year.
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By - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 11:05am
My Westlaw/iPod experience has reminded me of yet another Something I Didn’t Learn In Library School – Librarian Ethics.
Sure, we covered the basics, like “don’t give out patron information” and…um…actually, that’s the only one I really remember talking about. There must have been others (something about whether or not you can let a teenager have a book on how to commit suicide, maybe?), but I’m positive I was never confronted with a hypothetical of the sort I just experienced in real life.
As the comments on my iPod post (and ones I’ve received privately) have shown me, this is clearly an issue that librarians feel strongly about. It is also an issue open to wide interpretation – ranging from “So, hot damn, enjoy who you are, and all the benefits that come from it.” to “Accepting such gifts certainly clouds our ability to evaluate a product fairly and anyone who says otherwise is most likely kidding themselves.”
I can’t say what the right action is for others. I do want to make it clear that I don’t judge the librarians that went to Eagan or the ones that are keeping the iPods. (Or take pens or gift cards or stuffed animals, etc.) Counted among that group are some people that I consider good friends and I trust that their judgment is not clouded by vendor swag. I can only do what my gut tells me feels right, and for me that means not accepting any gifts from vendors.
The guy you see pictured here is one of my favorite fictional characters ever. His name is Omar Little and he is a thief, murderer and perjurer, amongst other things. He also has a personal code of honor that he upholds no matter what. (Apparently if you are involved in a drug war in Baltimore, you never, ever, EVER fight on Sundays. Nice.) While my stance on vendor swag may appear to be smug and self-righteous, I am the first to admit that I am not a perfect person. I haven’t publicly been called on it yet, but I do want to admit that when I was in Boston for ALA Midwinter, yes I took several free books from publishers in the exhibit hall…because I never do business with those vendors. I also take candy that they leave in Tech Services during the holidays and will eat the meals our reps bring when they demonstrate a new product.
I am also at any one time committing at least 4 of the 7 deadly sins.
So, no, I’m not perfect. I do, however, feel strongly that the librarian profession is more than just a job. Librarians are the gatekeepers to the world’s knowledge. This profession is an important one that has a greater duty to society, on par with doctors and teachers and, yes get your giggles out now, lawyers. So, yes, I do take these things seriously, perhaps a little more seriously than others. (In addition to this iPod dustup, this week I found myself harping on a nascent librarian friend on FriendFeed for talking about a celebrity patron publicly.) Maybe I do need to just chill out, just a little.
While I’ve been waiting to see what the legal department at MPOW has to say about how I can dispose of the iPod, I thought I’d check to see what my professional organizations have suggested with regards to ethics and to specifically see if they have any guidance to offer librarians when presented with gifts. Guess what? THEY DON’T.
Ethical Roundup:
- AALL has a code of ethics that hasn’t been updated in over 10 years. It states: ” We have a duty to avoid situations in which personal interests might be served or significant benefits gained at the expense of library users, colleagues, or our employing institutions.” which I guess is the most applicable. The Committee on Vendor Relations, near as I can tell, is silent on the swag issue.
- SLA doesn’t have a code of ethics (???!!!???) , but instead refers people to ASIS&T and AIIP, among others.
- ALA code of ethics
I can’t believe I’m actually suggesting this, but perhaps we need a committee for hashing out this issue and coming up with a more explicit policy? Or maybe also an ethical hotline where librarians can ask for opinions when confronted by the many sticky wickets of modern librarianship? Just a thought…
