Lenker proposes that when faced with difficult or "dangerous" questions that can result in an action either physically or emotionally harmful, or immoral, to the patron, or others we should implore the idea of Aristotle's virtue ethics.
Brief summary of virtue ethics: Virtue ethics focuses on an agent (a person) rather than the action. It is about what type of person you are becoming, what characteristics you are becoming to embody. With each action you are practicing your aim, to get closer and closer to the bullseye of goodness and contentedness, the doctrine of the mean, where your characteristics are between two extremes. While Aristotle defined virtue into four basic words, Lenker states that he wants to deviate slightly from this, and that there is much more to being virtuous.
So, what if Aristotle worked reference and was asked the question "do you have books on how to grow marijuiana?"
Surely he wouldn't want to be on the extreme of censorship, depriving someone knowledge, but he definitely wouldn't want to be on the other end of extreme mindless robot. Rather, he would respond in a manner that he felt he was habitually practicing on becoming a virtuous person, contentedness. He would act with something that he felt lay in the middle of these two.
I think this a very compelling way to think about ethics in the library. However, it is also somewhat contradictory with VII on the Code of Ethics by the ALA
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.Using virtue ethics is taking into account our personal convictions. Being able to distinguish what is professional and what is personal is important, but I think in some cases, personal trumps professional. At the end of they day we're all people and people relate to people. Otherwise, why not just make programmed robo-librarians?
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| Rosie from The Jetsons. Source :: Boston Globe / Editorial |
You did a really good job flushing out the Lenker article. I especially liked how you explained virtue ethics because I was not all clear on what he meant by that. Also, you made a good point about how his "balance" of personal and institutional ethics is in opposition to one of the ALA principles. An interesting conundrum.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely a difficult one. I feel that the problem with allowing your personal ethics to get in the way of professional ethics is that this gives people different levels of service based on who their librarian is. I think this is what the ALA was trying to avoid when they included this rule in the Code of Ethics. On the other hand, people get different levels of service based on who their librarian is anyway (based on the individual librarian's skill or knowledge). I do understand that there will be times when a person's personal ethics will prevent them from answering a question, but I did not like the way that Lenker framed the issue. I take issue with the idea of "dangerous" questions, and I believe that librarians, as a rule, should fight censorship.
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