I'm part of the book club group that meets this Monday, so I didn't attend class this week. Next blog post, you'll get a bonus, double-issue of class commentary.
ALA Ethics
As I read each of the eight principles of the ALA Code, I couldn't help but think, "Yes, yes. I agree!" These should be posted in every library in the country, and even though many of them seem like common sense, librarians should make a habit of reading through the list once a month. After all, it wouldn't take more than 10 minutes and would be a great reminder of the expectations and goals that come with the library profession.
I was especially interested in principle V: "We treat co-workers and other colleagues with respect, fairness, and good faith, and advocate conditions of employment that safeguard the rights and welfare of all employees of our institutions." While I would hope that people in all professions would follow that, I think it's interesting that the library world has spelled it out. I've certainly only been treated with respect, fairness, and good faith in the libraries where I've worked, though I don't know that the code had anything to do with it (and I doubt it did). It's still a nice touch, though.
Mosley
Over Spring Break, I went back to Kalamazoo College and visited the librarians I used to work with in the ILL and digitization apartments. As part of our discussion, a few of the librarians expressed frustration that professors were giving students assignments that they could not complete using library resources. (A certain professor would tell students they needed to get sources from a particular journal to which the library did not subscribe, and she would not accept alternate sources). It seems as though the library training for instructors that Mosley introduces would be a useful resource in that particular library.
Though I recognize how helpful this type of training could be, I wonder how realistic it would be to expect instructor participation. Would instructors really volunteer to come to day-long training on how to write assignments that utilize the library resources? Don't they think that they are writing good assignments? And if attendance were required by the administration, would the instructors truly participate, or just do the minimum amount of work required (especially if they felt they didn't need training)?
HCOD
I've been following this for the past few weeks and wrote about my thoughts on it in my last blog post. However, for this week's class, I read even more resources, including The CEO of OverDrive's statement. I was quite impressed with Potash's points, particularly his explanation of why OverDrive is not going to stop offering HarperCollins materials, and their reasoning of posting HarperCollins materials in a separate catalog. I felt as though OverDrive actually cared about libraries and that they would do what they could to continue to support them.
I wish I could say I felt the same about HC's statement. Its attempts at demonstrating that it cared about libraries (by saying they'd discussed the issue with librarians) seemed disingenuous, and it made me want to support the boycott against HC even more.
I'm curious what individual libraries in our area are reacting to the issue. I've actually had almost two weeks off from my library job (crazy) so I haven't had the chance to talk with any of CDL's librarians to see if the library is taking any action against HC. Though I know this is an important issue, I think the closing of Michigan libraries and the huge budget cuts are weighing more heavily on CDL.
You raise a great point about potential (and likely) reluctant participation from instructors. How sad to hear that the prof won't budge on the journal. And I bet the librarians would be amenable to ordering it IF SHE ASKED! We see a similar issue at the elementary level -- we've seen assignments where literally, the only source that can be found is Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteI'll look forward to hearing the perspective of the CDL librarians. The weird societal resentment building toward those in not-for-profit fields is also disheartening.
I agree with you about the OverDrive statement. They came up with a good (interim?) solution.
I am also curious about what the CDL librarians have to say. I work in an academic library so nothing has really changed much for them. They are used to paying obscene amounts of money for the material.
ReplyDeleteI find Principle V interesting too. You would think that it would just be expected that you would treat your coworkers with respect. It kind of makes me wonder if at some point there was an epidemic of mean librarians fighting with each other and ALA felt the need to deal with it. Maybe not, though. I guess most of the principles were common sense and things that I expected.
ReplyDeleteWell, there are alot of "statements" and things of that nature that say things that sound like common sense, but really aren't in my view. After all, I bet we could sit and define "respect" and come up with, yes, at the core probably the same thing, but it would be expressed in different ways. But then, a definition like that would be hard to put in a statement like this.
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