social networking as ethical discourse: blogging a practical and normative library ethic

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Social Networking as Ethical Discourse: Blogging aPractical and Normative Library EthicAmanda Clay Powers aa Mitchell Memorial Library , Mississippi State University , P.O. Box 5408, MS, 39762 E-mail:Published online: 12 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Amanda Clay Powers (2008) Social Networking as Ethical Discourse: Blogging a Practical and NormativeLibrary Ethic, Journal of Library Administration, 47:3-4, 191-209, DOI: 10.1080/01930820802186522

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Social Networking as Ethical Discourse:Blogging a Practical

and Normative Library Ethic

Amanda Clay Powers

ABSTRACT. Ethical codes have become static and the publicationschedule in the scholarly literature cannot keep pace with the challengesfacing the library profession. A dynamic, democratic ethical discourse isneeded to define a pragmatic ethics that will meet ongoing dilemmasfacing libraries. Social networking tools, and blogs in particular, havebecome a means for facilitating that conversation through the advent of acommunity of contributors sharing their values, debating ideals, and creat-ing a forum to address conflicting opinions. This world of library bloggershas created a structure for an ongoing ethical discussion for libraries to-day.

KEYWORDS. Social networking, weblogs, blogs, ethics, librarians, li-brarianship

INTRODUCTION

Over the last eighty years, the library profession has struggled to ad-dress the growing need to define the ethics of librarianship both throughits professional associations and in the library literature. As John Buddpoints out in his article, “Toward a Practical and Normative Ethics forLibrarianship,” “[j]ust about everything that librarians do as profession-

Amanda Clay Powers is Reference Services Librarian, Mitchell Memorial Library,Mississippi State University, P.O. Box 5408, MS 39762 (E-mail: [email protected]).

Available online at http://jla.haworthpress.com© 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1080/01930820802186522 191

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als carries ethical implications.”1 In the past, the profession has not hada flexible and dynamic method for addressing the ever-changing ethicalissues presenting themselves in the pragmatic work of libraries. TheAmerican Libraries Association has developed documents to guide li-braries in their activities; however, these documents do not always re-flect ongoing daily concerns in the profession and, as a result, havesignificant limitations. In Ethics and Libraries, Robert Hauptman sum-marizes the predicament:

Technology often advances so quickly that social and ethical con-siderations lag far behind. We proceed by the seat of our pantswith some scholars, pedagogues, and administrators advocatingabsolutist dogma and others attempting (and often failing) to me-diate between difficult positions.2

The traditional library literature requires months, if not years, to be pub-lished. Librarians have addressed the constraints this places on a dia-logue by using alternate methods of communication including attendingconferences, participating in listservs, and following the gray literatureof the profession. The relatively recent introduction of online social net-working tools into the library world has provided additional methodsfor addressing ever-changing ethical concerns.

Two of the technologies opening up professional discourse in librarycommunities are the weblog, or blog, and the RSS feed. Using thesetools, librarians and library staff have begun to create a dynamic dia-logue around virtual communities within the larger blog community, orblogosphere. The blogging library community has been identified as a“biblioblogosphere” by some, but regardless of the name, there appearsto be a growing and increasingly diverse group creating an ever-widen-ing discourse about libraries that is freely and immediately accessibleon the Internet. As reading and writing blogs has gained wider accep-tance and participation by the library profession, conflicting voiceshave emerged to daily debate and mediate difficult issues. The dialogueabout libraries has ceased to be limited by distance or media or timeli-ness. Through blogs, for good or ill, libraries are in conversation.

LIMITATIONS OF ETHICAL CODES

The American Libraries Association (ALA) created their first Codeof Ethics in 1939. The next draft of the Code was in 1975, with a State-

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ment of Professional Ethics released in 1981. The only major revisionpassed since 1939 occurred in 1995.3 Although the Codes have been ac-cepted by the library community, they are not without their detractors.Robert Hauptman, for example, in the Ethics of Librarianship statesthat the ALA Code of Ethics “rhetorically exhorts but provides no rea-son for adherence. It does not jibe with reality, and information workersfollow its tenants at their convenience.”4 John Buschman agrees in hispaper “On Not Revising the ALA Code of Ethics: An Alternate Pro-posal,” adding that regarding the principles of the Codes that the Asso-ciation itself “has taken the maximally cautious approach to them overthe years,”5 and moreover that the “ALA lacks the will and the imagina-tion to enforce” the Code of Ethics.6 Gregory Koster, finds that “[t]hemain problem with all the library codes is the code approach itself.Codes are apodictic: they attempt firm rules. But ethical dilemmas arecomplex . . . real-life situations puncture the right commandments withwhich the codes address these topics.”7 Wendell G. Johnson finds thatthe ALA Code of Ethics “provides little guidance to the harried refer-ence librarian facing a long line of waiting patrons.”8

Others find the codes worthwhile, if flawed. In his 2006 paper “Infor-mation Ethics for Twenty-first Century Library Professionals,” DonFallis states that the “[c]odes of professional ethics are an important andvaluable resource for library professionals [;]” however, they “tend toleave a number of important questions unanswered” and are “written byfallible human beings and are subject to criticism and revision.”9 In“Toward a Practical and Normative Ethics for Librarianship,” JohnBudd brings into question the Library Bill of Rights (LBR) as well, interms of its success in attempting to “articulate a coherent ethical the-ory,” continuing that it, along with the other library Codes, “constitute anascent discourse ethics, but the tacit realm in which they have existedneeds to become explicit.”10

Fallis argues that codes primarily were meant to “guide the behaviorof library professionals” and “inform the public about what library pro-fessionals are committed to doing” along with outlining ethical princi-ples in a general sense. He questions what happens when theseprinciples come into conflict, as the classic example that has become sorelevant today, when protecting the privacy of our patrons comes intoconflict with our duty to society to protect our fellow citizen from ter-rorists.11 These conflicts are difficult to resolve using the current codes,according to Budd, as “there are differing conceptions of right andgood, of intellectual freedom and censorship, even of ethical theories.To at least some extent, the discussion and controversy surrounding

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these issues are antinomies, contradictions between statements thateach has reasonable grounds.”12

The challenge then seems to be how to move beyond the tacit “na-scent discourse ethics” presented in the Codes and LBR and into a moredynamic ethics by finding a way to make the ethical discussion more ex-plicit. Moving from a static, didactic code and into an ongoing method-ology for expressing the pragmatic ethics of librarianship would takethe Code out of theory and test it in practice. Creating an explicit ethicaldiscourse, with the intent to actively define or delineate the values of theprofession, moves librarianship toward a practical and normativeethics.

MODELING VALUES OF LIBRARIANSHIP

Structuring the ethics of librarianship through examination of thevalues of the profession has long been discussed as an alternative to at-tending strictly to library codes. George Koster proposes an ethics of li-brarianship based on values, rather than adherence to the Code ofEthics: “Analyzing the particular values in conflict in each situation il-luminates the heart of the ethical issue and facilitates the balancing thatpermits a principled response . . . .the decisions would be based onclearly articulated values, and our differences would be illuminated in away that would foster dialogue and reflection.”13 Michael Gorman con-curs with Koster’s effort in Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the21st Century, by attempting “to illuminate and re-create the underpin-nings of our profession to, at least, provide a framework for discussion,and at best, be a broad plan with which we may all proceed.”14 Goremanin “urg[ing] consideration of the values that underlie our work in librar-ies and as librarians” means to facilitate that ethical discourse.15 Thisleads him to examine four library philosophers and synthesize his ownview of the libraries “Central or ‘Core’ Values”: stewardship, service,intellectual freedom, rationalism, literacy and learning, equity of accessto recorded knowledge and information, privacy and democracy.16 Heacknowledges that values may change over time; however, he believesthat “such change must be gradual and evolutionary and should concernshades of meaning rather than the core of the value itself.”17 Whether ornot values change over time, an ongoing discussion about the valuesand applications of values make the ethics of librarianship more ex-plicit. “Values also provide a basis for argument and discussion and a


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set of premises needed for fruitful interaction with other people andwith other groups.”18

Don Fallis agrees with returning to values as a means for discussingthe ethics of information professionals. He outlines four theories thatapply to information ethics, which include consequence-based theory,duty-based theory, rights-based theory, and virtue-based theory. Eventhese theories have limitations, as Fallis points out–they are based inWestern traditions (Mills, Kant, Locke and Aristotle), however theyform one working structure for examining the types of ethical discourseunderway. “Different ethics theories will sometimes reach differentconclusions about what the right thing to do is. However, this possibil-ity does not imply that we have to determine which theory is the correctethical theory before we can profitably engage in ethical reasoning.”Open discourse about ethical issues in libraries without an attempt tocategorize them into a certain ethical model can be effective, encourag-ing deliberation about issues without placing participants into formalethical positions. Instead by considering “what rights might be at stakeand about the potential consequences to the people affected by thedecision, library professionals are more likely to make betterdecisions.”19

Fallis argues that in order for information professionals to makebetter decisions regarding the ethical dilemmas they meet, it is impor-tant for them to have a “good working knowledge of information eth-ics.”20 He proposes to include information ethics as an essential part ofthe library school curriculum, which is certainly already in place tosome extent in many library science programs. Robert Hauptman agreeswith Fallis in that “[u]nderstanding foundational structures and princi-ples in addition to technological gadgetry and at least attempting toforesee where we are heading will help information workers to servetheir constituencies in a productive, legal and ethical manner.”21

Hauptman goes on to suggest that it is important to continue these dis-cussions and this learning in the professional environment through“[i]n-house discussions, workshops, conferences and ongoing familiar-ity with the scholarly literature.”22

TOWARD AN ETHICAL DISCOURSE

Although theoretical ethical discussions are taking place in the pro-fession’s scholarly literature, there has been a tendency in other venuesto focus on the pragmatic. Lamenting that fact in The Creed of a Librar-


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ian, D. J. Foskett notes the “librarians’ lack of philosophy,” and statesthat “[m]any librarians have maintained that we must not start dreamingabout a professional philosophy, because it would interfere with our ef-ficiency.”23 Gorman echoes that sentiment 38 years later from acrossthe pond in Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century.Reflecting on the focus of the ethical discussion in librarianship to date,Gorman finds that the profession “has evolved over many centurieswithout too much regard to philosophy, overarching principles, and val-ues, but with a great respect for the practical, the useful, and the utilitar-ian. One could almost say we have evolved a kind of antiphilosophy ofpracticality–one that values what works and discards what does not.”For Gorman, it “leaves a void, a sense of longing for more meaning andricher philosophical underpinnings.”24 However, acknowledging theimportance of pragmatic discussions, John Budd explains that “thepractical side of ethics is vital to work in librarianship. The essentialcharacter of ethics in librarianship includes recognition that, as aprofession, the concern is for the public life of participants and theirpublic actions.”25

Discussions regarding ethics and values in the library profession arebeing recorded in books, journal articles, magazine articles, and even injournals entirely dedicated to the discussion of information ethics. Thelag time in publication for most of these formats can be months andeven years in preparation. Solving the pragmatic ethical dilemmas asthey arise, or sharing solutions with colleagues can often leave the li-brarian flying by the seat of his or her pants, to paraphrase Hauptman.26

How, then, have we been proceeding with our need to resolve practicalethical dilemmas as they arise? As with most professions, the gray liter-ature has addressed this need for more immediate source for reflectionand sharing. Gray literature in the library profession has traditionally in-cluded informal publications, conferences proceedings, working pa-pers, dissertations and theses, among other sources. In recent years withthe advent of new technologies, listservs, blogs, wikis and other socialnetworking tools are contributing to the informal communication oflibrarianship.

Budd confirms the need for these informal discussions by puttingforth his own proposal for using a dialogue, or discourse, for a prag-matic normative ethic for librarianship. “In order to achieve the goal ofrights as foundation, processes of deliberation within librarianship mustbe established.” It could be argued that those “processes of delibera-tion” are being modeled in the world of social networking throughgroups of librarian-bloggers who regularly post their own blogs and


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comment on each others’ blogs concerning issues in librarianship. Buddwrites that “the most attractive form of deliberation is discourse ethicsthat recognizes the dialectic nature of this (or any) profession. The re-sult is an ethical state that serves the good of both the profession and thecommunities.”27

SOCIAL NETWORKING IN DISCOURSE ETHICS

The advantage to Budd’s model of ethical discourse is that “even inthe initial stages of deliberation, the positions taken by all participantscan be known.” Social networking tools are particularly useful in thistype of approach as “discourse ethics requires that there be publicity,that positions, and more importantly, reasons for holding positions bemade public so that they can be deliberated.”28 Blogging is one of thesocial networking tools that provides such an open forum for ethical de-bate, and has, indeed, already begun to develop a pattern of ethicaldiscourse. Blogs are public, with each blogger accountable for their state-ments, and even when anonymous, readers still hold the blogs them-selves accountable through comments left on the blog, references andtrackbacks on their own blogs, or comments on other blogs referencingthe original blog.

Karen Schneider is credited with coining the term “biblioblogo-sphere” to describe the world of library bloggers. With blogs written bylibrary staff, official and otherwise, on the increase, Meredith Farkas’Survey of the Biblioblogosphere found that respondents with libraryblogs increased from 165 in 2005 to 839 responding to a follow-up sur-vey in 2007.29 These include all types of blogs related to libraries, in-cluding official and unofficial blogs.

Michael Stephens surveyed the world of professionally-focused li-brary bloggers, in part to determine their motivations for blogging. Us-ing the “pragmatic bibliographer” model from Wilson (1977), Stephensconstructs a model of a “pragmatic biblioblogger” from his observa-tions of the 269 respondents to his survey who “publish a blog beyondthe scope of their formal job descriptions to find, share and offer adviceto others in the Library and Information Science profession.”30 Primar-ily interested in sharing their opinions and other information, Stephensfinds this pragmatic biblioblogger to have a practice of “[i]nsight andreflection” in their community with a potential for “shared knowledge,learning, creation of best practice” in their blogs.31 Stephens reports acommon goal among these bibliobloggers:


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Constantly scanning via the tools of continuous computing, thepragmatic biblioblogger seeks to redesign library services in anera of enhanced technology. These librarians open comments andengage with other bloggers to discuss and examine events, newtechnologies, and the LIS profession within a community theyhave created with a common goal: improving libraries.32

This sense of engagement and community can be seen in discussions ofvalues and ethics of librarianship, and particularly librarianship as it re-lates to new technologies. If the goal is to improve libraries, the method-ology of a pragmatic biblioblogger is sharing experiences, interests, andnews through creating blog entries, or by linking to related blogs orcommenting on blogs.

Library blogs, and in particular, Stephens’ pragmatic bibliobloggershave sped up our pragmatic discussions about issues in our libraries, in-cluding the need to define and discuss our library ethics. Social net-working tools are facilitating these discussions and often on aminute-by-minute basis with real-time examples. A librarian faced withethical dilemmas can turn to a community of colleagues also thinkingand dealing with the same issues and create a conversation around thetopic, drawing a wide variety of voices within the library community todiscuss and debate it. Blogs are following what Budd describes as the“democratic form of public policy . . . and [a]n essential part of the dem-ocratic way of being is deliberation, especially public deliberation.”33 Inthe past this deliberation has taken place in less public arenas, such aswithin committees of the American Library Association or throughthose who read and contribute to professional publications, or even inconferences that might be prohibitive in cost or time. Social networkingand RSS feeds have allowed librarians to bring those discussions intotheir workplace, directly into their workflow for no cost and at their ownconvenience. No longer does one have to search out the publication–in-stead one can choose to create a community of blogs in which to readand comment, relying in part on others to post notes about conferences,bring new technologies into the discussion or bring up new publicationsof interest.

Blog discussions frequently turn on a point of clarification regardingwhat is valued in librarianship. The recent debate following Laura Co-hen’s November 11, 2006, posting of “A Librarian’s 2.0 Manifesto,” onher blog, Library 2.0: An Academic’s Perspective, is one example ofjust such a debate. Subsequently published in the August 2007 issue of


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American Libraries as “A Manifesto for our Times”34 her blog postoutlined a list of values, including:

• I will recognize that the universe of information culture is chang-ing fast and that libraries need to respond positively to thesechanges to provide resources and services that users need andwant.

• I will educate myself about the information culture of my users andlook for ways to incorporate what I learn into library services.

• I will become an active participant in moving my library forward.• I will be willing to go where the users are, both online and in physi-

cal spaces, to practice my profession.

This post stirred frustration in the Library Garden blog, where Ty-ler Rousseau declared on July 12, 2007 in “Librarian 2.0: The NewProfessional or the Responsible One?” that “it should have been partof our profession all along,” and introduced a broader issue regard-ing librarians who “refuse to keep up with the professional and tech-nological requirements.” Commenting on this blog, DanielCannCasciato disagrees with Laura Cohen’s “Manifesto,” proposingthat there may be different ideas of what it means to be “up-to-date”in the profession. Upon publication of the “Manifesto” in AmericanLibraries, debate raged at the Annoyed Librarian blog and subse-quently on many other library blogs about “twopointopian”-think-ing35 (a term the Annoyed Librarian coined), and was rejected bysome as being overly-zealous in proselytizing the value of what hadcome to be known as Library 2.0 values or ideals, particularly as ex-pressed in Cohen’s “Manifesto.” This sort of debate can be used tomove toward a normative ethics for libraries, using a discourse ethicsbased on deliberative democracy.

More than just a formal argument, discourse ethics entails participa-tion broadly; it invites those concerned to have a voice within the com-municative endeavor. The voicing, however, follows some norms thatare aimed at the outcome of the deliberation–workable and agreed uponpractices.”36 Blogs are a natural avenue for these discussions; however,other social networking tools also facilitate a broad participation inreaching “workable and agreed upon practices,” including wikis like theLibrary Success wiki, or instruction programs such as Learning 2.0 orthe Five Weeks to a Social Library program.37


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BLOGGING ETHICS

Evidence of this engagement in the biblioblogosphere is seen with adiscussion that began outside the pragmatic biblioblogger’s commu-nity. Discussions of blog ethics and rules of blogging had been simmer-ing in the larger blog world for some time. Rebecca Blood’s TheWeblog Handbook published in 1999, contained a chapter on “WeblogEthics.”38 Then in April 2003, Cyberjournalist.net published “ABloggers’ Code of Ethics” outlining blogging values including honesty,fairness, accountability, and minimizing harm.39

An example of the ethical discourse as it is played out in the libraryblog world is the meta-conversation that has happened regarding theethics of blogging itself. In bringing these values into the open, theyhave been discussed and deliberated upon by those writing libraryblogs, those reading library blogs, and eventually those reading themainstream library literature. To better understand how ethical dis-course is happening in the pragmatic biblioblogger community, it ispossible to follow the debate around the ethics of blogging and the val-ues of bloggers. The first incursion or reaction to the broader discussionof ethics within the general blogosphere may have come from ElizabethLawley’s post of August 8, 2003, on her blog, mamamusings, “rules? idon’t need no stinkin’ rules!” Rejecting a call for ethical rules forblogging, she questioned the need for rules by stating that “you’ll haveto trust me implicitly, or not trust me at all.”

Karen Schneider posted frequently on her blog, the Free Range Li-brarian, regarding ethics in general, as well as ethical issues related toblogging. Her April 4, 2004, blog, “Gmail: Google Stepped In It,”imagines digital librarians hosting an “ethicsfest to port our values to anew platform.” This sense that values need to be translated for the digi-tal world seems to echo Robert Hauptman’s sense that “[t]echnology of-ten advances so quickly that social and ethical considerations lag farbehind.”40 Schneider continues, referring to the library profession’s“historically fervent commitment to free speech, the right to read, andprivacy” as values “to bring forward from the quaint old days of boundbooks and Gaylord charge machines.” By May 28, 2004, in the blog“Human Kindness and the Internet,” at Free Range Librarian, Schnei-der wonders if her colleagues would consider “a code of ethics for com-munications in the digital environment . . . to guide us in our actions inthis new world.” Entering into the conversation through comments onthis blog, Seth Finkelstein demurs, saying that “a ‘code of ethics’ isn’tgoing to help” as they are “unrealistic,” and he gives an example of a sit-


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uation that he believes would be difficult to resolve with a code of eth-ics, in which one participant refuses to abide by the rules of thecommunity–intentional deception, or a similarly intractable stance. Hethen refers Schneider to his own post regarding a dispute within alistserv that he considered insoluble given the guidelines of that listserv.Entering into the debate via Schneider’s blog posting through com-ments and linking to external websites demonstrates a dynamic ethicaldiscourse, presenting starting points for a debate.

On June 9, 2004, Michael Stephens posts “Ten Things a Blogging Li-brarian Must Do (an exercise in common sense)” and on November 14,2004, “The Library Blogger’s Personal Protocols,”on his blog Tame theWeb and sets up his own code of ethics for library bloggers. Stephens’code(s) reflects established values of the profession, including intellec-tual integrity and privacy concerns, but the codes also bring to the foreother issues, such as the value of engaging in and committing to com-munity, expressing opinions and sharing experiences, and promotingideas of interest. These are values that have not generally been ex-pressed in previous debate regarding values and ethics in librarianship.Indeed, it is not surprising that new values would arise from the chang-ing professional models of librarians today, and the flexibility to iden-tify and debate new ideas about values is facilitated by the moredynamic conversation that social networking can provide. On Novem-ber 22, 2004 in his post “Twelve Things I Learned at Internet Librarian2004,” Stephens calls for “’blogging policy’ for staff and a ‘blog stylemanual’ for their own blogs.”

On December 8, 2004, the Blogging Ethics weblog was launched bya PhD student, referred to only as “Martin,” at University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill with five ethical questions posed to bloggers.This site, along with Michael Stephens’ “Ten Things a Blogging Librar-ian Must do” and Cyberjournalist.net, are cited by Karen Schneider inher series of four blog posts on blogging ethics for the library commu-nity beginning on December 9, 2004 with “Ethics, At Last” at The FreeRange Librarian. In this post, she states that librarians are the “stan-dard-bearers for accurate, unbiased information” and that “unprofes-sional problems do not represent us well to the world.” Rochelle arguesin a comment on the blog that “no one should be trying to provide ‘unbi-ased’ information through a blog,” and recommends instead thatbloggers attempt to “[b]e smart, be thoughtful, be well-informed” andnot to try to “efface themselves from their own content.” Her commenthere reflects directly back to one of the profession’s long-held values,which Foskett delineates in The Creed of the Librarian–and that is the


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librarian should be “chameleon-like” and have “no politics, no religionand no morals [in order to] have all politics, all religion and all morals.”41

The pragmatic discussion via the comments section of the December 9,2004 blog between Rochelle and Schneider draws out a distinction be-tween the blog as a journalistic endeavor and a more opinion-orientedcommentary.

In response to Schneider’s December 9 post, David Lee King re-sponds on December 10 his blog www.davidleeking.com with “Contin-uing Discussion of Blogging Ethics.” King’s response is largely aclarification of his own ethical stance as a blogger, spelling out his placeand refining the discussion on whether bloggers should follow a jour-nalistic ethical code by stating that he is “participating in a new mediumof communication that resembles some aspects of traditional journal-ism.” Michael Stephens responds on the same day at Tame the Webwith a reflective piece, “Blog Ethics!” referring to the ethical codes hehad placed on his blog, but also referring to David Weinberger’s discus-sion on C-SPAN at the Library of Congress regarding the reliability oftraditional journalism vs. the blogosphere. Pulling outside informationand influences into this pragmatic debate over blogging ethics is one ofthe characteristics of the pragmatic biblioblogger’s ethical discourse.

The second part of Karen Schneider’s “Blogging and Ethics” se-ries–“The Cloak of Commentary” on December 11, 2004–exhorts theblogger to “fact-check, reveal sources, limit bias and emphasize fair-ness” in order to “make your commentary readable and your conclu-sions credible.” She outlines a distinction between opinion and bias,adding that opinion can be “fair and ethical,” and that in this “meta-ethi-cal issue” ignoring that distinction might represent “our own kind” as“clueless, sloppy, and uninterested in the ethical issues related to theworld of information and how it is represented.” Additionally, she pro-poses a set of “standards of blogging” for official Public Library Asso-ciation (PLA) bloggers at the ALA Midwinter in 2005 to show awillingness to “commit to standards that won’t make us cringe when welook back at our activities ten or thirty years hence.”

In framing this “meta-ethical” issue, Schneider structures a practicaland immediate ethical discourse, creating a frame for content and dis-cussion. Jason Nolan responds to Schneider’s “The Cloak of Commen-tary” in his own blog post, “The Fetishized Meta-Narrative of ‘TheLibrarian’” on December 12, 2004 at his blog http://jasonnolan.net. Hisinterpretation of Schneider’s portrayal of the librarian as the “bannercarrier for all that’s right, true and good,” argues that there is “no ivorytower perfection” for librarians any more, and that people are “smart


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enough to tell the difference” between academic work and an informalblog discussion. Nolan enters the debate from outside the biblioblogo-sphere as an academic interested in blogging who resists the idea that li-brarians have some particular ethical responsibility as bloggers due totheir profession. Unlike traditional modes of scholarly communicationwithin the library profession, one benefit of the world of library blogs isthat it is open to comment by anyone on the Internet. The conversationis taking place in front of the rest of the blogosphere, and as a result, li-brarians have the opportunity for their ideas to gain exposure andcritique from a larger community.

Elizabeth Lane Lawley also responds in a comment on Schneider’spost “The Cloak of Commentary” that she sees “blogs as a medium, nota genre” and for her, that makes a code of ethics unnecessary. Monthslater, in a contribution to the Blogging Ethics site on March 27, 2005,Jessamyn West contributes to the debate, asserting that blogs are a“MEDIUM, not an avocation or even a type of writing” [emphasishers]. West goes on to say that “bloggers just use ethics codes to beatpeople over the head with instead of treating them based on the qualityof their writing/arguments.” Themes begin to emerge as more voicesjoin the discussion. Dissent and division are apparent as the debatewidens.

Responding to Nolan at The Free Range Librarian in “Blogging andEthics, Part 3: Matthew Arnold in a Polka-Dot Dress” on December 13,2004, Schneider argues in part that she is following in the path of the Li-brary Bill of Rights (LBR), a document that acts as “an internal guid-ance document” and that the interpretations of the LBR are “internallydirected.” This seems to demonstrate Schneider’s intent regarding herposts on ethics to focus on ethics from within librarianship, rather thanethics as related to librarians’ interactions with users. In the same post,Schneider responds to Lawley stating that “ethics and integrity are cru-cial to all genres.” Defending ethical guidelines for blogging on Decem-ber 13, 2004 in “Nobody Has To Be Nice,” Schneider boils down the“policy” recommendations for the PLA bloggers to “fact-checking, re-vealing sources and conflicts of interest, [and] avoiding ready-fire-aim.” In her final post of the series on December 19, 2004, “Bloggingand Ethics, Part 4: Don’t Stand So Close To Me,” she focuses on the“moral obligation to clarify when you plan to take a conversation on therecord.” With the four-part series, Schneider lays out the beginnings offrame for a discussion about the ethics of bloggers within the bibli-blogosphere, and before she is finishsed, the discussion has begun.


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Walt Crawford weighs in on the debate in the “Conference Reportsand Conference Blogging” section of the January 2005 issue of Cites &Insights: Crawford at Large,42 concluding that “bloggers who presumeto discuss matters beyond their own diary should maintain some ethicalawareness, just as should anyone writing non-fiction.” Randy Reichardtthen picks up on Crawford’s piece, in his The SciTech Library Questionblog on January 13, 2005, “Cites & Insights, Ethics & Zines,” referringthen to Schneider’s series of ethics posts, he notes that while responsesto her posts have been mixed, he “appreciate[s] that she has raised an is-sue that is at the very least a reality check for those of us who blog on be-half of, and thus representing, our profession.” Schneider’s response ina comment on his posting was to “continue to insist it’s indefensible forlibrarians to post carelessly and then excuse themselves by saying, ‘it’sjust a blog.’”

One of the characteristics of this blogging community is that the re-sponse is immediate. Schneider’s ideas began to be debated immedi-ately within the biblioblogosphere. Richard A. Spinello in EthicalAspects of Information Technology lays out a methodology for identify-ing and evaluating this debate as an ethical discourse:

[A] general framework for case analysis [ ] includes the followingkey elements: identify the moral issues, consider your intuitive orinstinctual response, evaluate the issue from the vantage point ofthe normative principles and ethical theories, determine if the prin-ciples and theories would point to one course of action and, if not,consider which principle or theory should take precedence, reach anormative conclusion about the case, and determine its public pol-icy implications.43

Responding to Schneider’s blogs, the biblioblogosphere began to buildon that “general framework” in picking apart the issues around ameta-ethics of blogging. The bloggers began moving into a discourseregarding the “intuitive or instinctual response[s]” from the community,evaluating the debate from the view of an ethical theory and beginningto work toward a normative theory. Indeed, public policy began to beimplemented with the ethical codes used by the PLA bloggers at theALA Midwinter 2005. In the span of a month or two, the debate wentfrom identifying a moral issue to implementing (at least a preliminary)public policy.

In Schneider’s series of posts, she sets forth what becomes crystal-lized in her brief Library Journal netconnect piece in Spring 2005, “The


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Ethical Blogger.” She posits that “every blog produced by librarians, nomatter how casual, represents librarianship to the world.” Her synthesisof ethics for the librarian blogger encourages “transparency, fairness,cite it, get it right, and if you broke it, fix it.” In closing, she exhorts li-brarians to blog “from the best ethical framework you can muster . . .[m]ake your contributions to the biblioblogosphere something of whichwe can all be proud.”44 The debate begun in the library blog world hasgone from an identification of moral issues, and evaluation of the issuesin a broader communal debate following intuitive responses, to an effortto bring the issue to an even broader community through a mainstreamlibrary publication.

A seamless shift from blog to mainstream publication and then backinto the blogosphere occurs with Heather Ebey’s April 17, 2005 post atLibrarianway.com responding to Schneider’s “The Ethical Blogger.”Her response, “Ethics in the Blogosphere,” largely summarizes Schnei-der’s article, but reflects that being a standard-bearer for our profession“could also be stifling,” and it would be better “if you have something tosay, or are posting from a conference, to just get it out there . . . if you areuncertain, tell your readers that you are uncertain . . . [b]e ready to cor-rect it.” Pulling in references to other work on the ethics of blogging,Ebey also quotes Walt Crawford as saying “[t]reat others the way you’dwish them to treat you.”

Then on February 15, 2005, Michael Gorman published an essay inLibrary Journal titled “Revenge of the Blog People” in which he stated:

It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to readrather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong onthe basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote.Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubtthat many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained readingof complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needsare met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.45

Gorman, whose work on library ethics, Our Enduring Values: Librari-anship in the 21st Century, has played such a central role in defining thevalues of libraries in the literature since it was published in 2000, hastaken offense at what he perceives is a lack of intellectual integrity andfairness in the blog community. There are no specific blogs mentioned,but this piece provides another jumping off point for the ongoing con-versation in the biblioblogosphere regarding the ethics of blogging. Mi-chael Stephens responds in part on April 1, 2005, placing Gorman’s


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essay in the context of the ongoing conversations about ethics within thelibrary blogging community, referring to Karen Schneider’s work onthe subject. His post, “10 Things I’ve Learned as a Blogging Librarian”at his blog Tame the Web addresses blogging ethics with an attempt toprovoke and widen the conversation. He directs his questions to his en-tire readership: “What ethics do you blog by? What guidelines for yourwork do you use?” Echoing much of what Schneider had proposed, andwhat already appeared under his own ethical guidelines, Stephens of-fers his readers his own perspective: “Our blogs represent us–our pro-fessionalism and our interest in LIS.” He goes on to promotetransparency in libraries, and the value of participating “in a communityof practice and exchang[ing] ideas and our best tips . . . one reason LISblogging thrives is because we like to see what other folks are doing.We like to stay in touch and informed. We share.” One real advantage ofbeing part of that community, according to Stephens, is taking advan-tage of the collective access to information available, “[h]ow else wouldso much information move so quickly to folks tuned in and turned on toRSS or bloglines?” Gorman’s volley becomes incorporated into thepragmatic biblioblogger’s framework for the ethical discourse.

In another response to Gorman on March 12, 2005, Ebey reviews theCyberjournalist.net in “A Blogger’s Code of Ethics,” at Librarian Way,reacting to the fear that the practical biblioblogger might become “aGorman-view blogperson,” and consequently opening up a consider-ation of ethical issues with a call for application of traditional ethicaltheories to the current debate:

Ethics really depends on your viewpoint, your culture, your localcommunity of peers, and the time in which you live. What was itwe studied in ethics class in college? Greatest good for the greatestnumber or is ethics what the populace believes is ethical?

Here Ebey is moving into Spinello’s evaluative process “from the van-tage point of the normative principles and ethical theories.”46

By October of 2005 an interview with several pragmatic biblio-bloggers, “Talkin’ Blogs” in the Library Journal revealed evidence thatthis discussion had been ongoing, with each of the bloggers taking a po-sition in the debate on blogging ethics that had been taking place in theblogosphere: “get your facts straight,” have a “clear editorial policy,”“if you make a mistake, just own up to it,” “I don’t like the thought of usbeing journalists, because I’m writing about my life,” “I have a personal


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[code] that I actually posted,” “I had to establish very early that what Iwas doing was totally independent and not related to my employers,” “Idon’t have a strict set of guidelines . . . [b]ut it’s something I think aboutall the time.”47 All those interviewed posited themselves within thestructure of the ongoing discourse underway.

CONCLUSION

Given the importance of addressing ethical dilemmas as they arise inour profession, particularly if they are arising more quickly due tochanging technological environments, Budd’s proposed model of a de-liberative, democratic discourse to addressing these issues provides anexcellent path forward for ethical discussions in the library profession.It seems clear from an examination of the method in which the prag-matic bibliobloggers are treating the issue of the ethics of blogging thata dynamic, normative and pragmatic discourse is underway in thebiblioblogosphere, and that these blogs have become a new gray litera-ture in the library profession.

This meta-examination of the meta-conversation about ethics in thelibrary blog community set forth here is only one example, if signifi-cant, of the ongoing ethical debates. Discussions regarding the values ofthese blogging librarians, as well as commentary on the values of thelarger library community have direct bearing on any ethical debatewithin the library community. If there are more than 800 respondents toMeredith Farkas’ 2007 Survey of the Biblioblogosphere,48 there arecountless more who subscribe to these blogs or visit and read them, ei-ther participating directly or merely observing these conversations.

Going forward, the library literature regarding ethics would do wellto reflect on these conversations, as the library profession’s values andethics evolve. Librarians need to be aware of ethical frameworks in or-der to have productive discussions in any forum regarding the chal-lenges we are facing in libraries today. Requiring ethics to be part of afoundation in library schools is one method of creating that awareness;however, the scholarly literature must reflect the pragmatic ethics beingworked out in the library profession today. The biblioblogosphere hascreated an environment ideally suited for the practical and normativeethical discourse that Budd called for in order to make our ethics ex-plicit. And the conversation has begun in earnest.


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NOTES

1. John M. Budd, “Toward a Practical and Normative Ethics for Librarianship,” TheLibrary Quarterly 76 (2006): 251.

2. Richard Hauptman, Ethics and Librarianship (Jefferson, NC: McFarland &Company, 2002), 14.

3. American Library Association Council, “History of the Code of Ethics,” Ameri-can Library Association., http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/codeofethics/coehistory/Default2092.htm.

4. Hauptman, 135.5. John Buschman, “On Not Revising the ALA Code of Ethics: An Alternate Pro-

posal,” Library Philosophy and Practice 8, no. 2 (2006), para. 5 http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~mbolin/buschman2.htm.

6. Buschman, para. 13.7. Gregory E. Koster, “Ethics in Reference Service: Codes, Case studies or Val-

ues?” RSR: Reference Services Review 20 (1992): 72.8. Wendell G. Johnson, “The Need for a Value-Based Reference Policy: John Rawls

at the Reference Desk,” The Reference Librarian 47 (1994): 202.9. Don Fallis, “Information Ethics for Twenty-first Century Library Professionals.”

Library Hi Tech 25 (2007): 31.10. Budd, 266.11. Fallis, 26.12. Budd, 267.13. Koster, 77.14. Michael Gorman, Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century.

(Chicago: American Library Association, 2000), 1.15. Gorman, Our Enduring Values, 3.16. Gorman, Our Enduring Values, 26-27.17. Gorman, Our Enduring Values, 5.18. Gorman, Our Enduring Values, 7.19. Fallis, 31.20. Fallis, 24.21. Hauptman, 14.22. Hauptman, 15.23. D.J. Foskett, “The Creed of a Librarian” (occasional paper No.3, Reference,

Special and Information Section, North Western Group, The Library Association, Lon-don, 1962): 3-4.

24. Gorman, Our Enduring Values, 17.25. Budd, 253.26. Hauptman, 14.27. Budd, 251.28. Budd, 265.29. Farkas, Meredith, “Interesting Facts from the Survey of the Biblioblogosphere

2007,” Information Wants to Be Free, posted August 25, 2007, http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2007/08/25/interesting-facts-from-the-survey-of-the-biblioblogosphere-2007/.

30. Michael Stephens, “Modeling the Role of Blogging in Librarianship.” (PhDdiss., University of North Texas, 2007) 113; P. Wilson, Public Knowledge, Private Ig-norance: Toward a Library and Information Policy. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,1977).


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31. Stephens, 121.32. Stephens, 128.33. Budd, 264.34. Laura Cohen, “A Manifesto for Our Times,” Library Journal 38 (2007): 47-49.35. “Twopointopian” is a term first coined on the Annoyed Librarian blog on Au-

gust 27, 2007 in “The Cult of Twopointopia” (http://annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com), aresponse to Laura Cohen’s “Library 2.0 Manifesto.” The discussion continue on otherblogs, such as www.davidleeking.com and Meredith Farkas’ Information Wants to beFree (http://meredith.wolfwater.com).

36. Budd, 265.37. The Library Success Wiki (http://www.libsuccess.org), Learning 2.0 (http://

plcmclearning.blogspot.com), and the 5 Weeks to a Social Library program(http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/) are all examples of avenues through whichthe library community is reaching normative practices in the 2.0 world.

38. Rebecca Blood, “Weblog Ethics,” in The Weblog Handbook,http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html.

39. Jonathan Dube, ed. Cyberjournalist.net. “A Blogger’s Code of Ethics,”http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php.

40. Hauptman, 14.41. Foskett, 10-11.42. Walt Crawford. “Conference Reports and Conference Blogging,” Cites & In-

sights: Crawford at Large 5, no.1 (2005): 1-2.43. Richard A. Spinello, Ethical Aspects of Information Technology (Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995), 41-42.44. Karen Schneider, “The Ethical Blogger,” Library Journal: netconnect. Suppl.

Spring 2005: 36.45. Michael Gorman, “Revenge of the Blog People,” Library Journal 130, no.3

(2005): 44.46. Spinello, 41-42.47. Brian Kenney and Michael Stephens. “Talkin’ Blogs,” Library Journal 130,

no.16 (2005): 38-41.


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social networking as ethical discourse: blogging a practical and normative library ethic

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