Walking the line

Damn ethics! If it wasn’t for them we’d have cracked this revenue things ages ago. 

I find myself spending quite a bit of time thinking about this project and my mind keeps trying to find parallels in the private sector. Who else gives away their product or service to heaps of diverse users and yet also generates revenue? Inevitably my mind turns to the like of facebook and google and their advertising revenue. On paper it seems like libraries’ golden goose. Someone requests a book and they get an advert in the hold pickup notice e.g. request a book on deck building get an advert for a hardware store. Great, except for one problem: ethics. The LIANZA code of conduct kinda rules it out without spending a lot of time seeking permission from various people*

11.4    Any information about identified clients and their individual interests obtained by librarians in the course of their professional duties is privileged and should not be used for any purpose other than that for which it was obtained without the express permission of those clients or unless required by law. This obligation continues after the relationship ceases.

In the early stages of the project we set ourselves two clear guiding principles.

1.    We won’t be changing existing users for existing services

2.    The conversation is always free

These should be fairly self-explanatory but to add a bit of clarification they mean that 1) We won’t be charging our users for products/services they currently receive for free and won’t be charging new users for services existing users receive for free. 2) In the spirit of transparency and collegiality we will always be open to talk about our work whether that is to fellow library staff or potential customers; even if this involves talking about a service and thereby enabling you to do it yourself. As far as guidelines go they’re fairly uncomplicated and provide us with some pretty good guidelines to ensure we don’t contravene professional or organisational ethics. In practice it is a little more complicated.

I’ve been reading The Entrepreneurial Librarian recently and it does a good job of highlighting some of the things we’re dealing with now and will meet in the future. For instance, entrepreneurialism would suggest that if two customers approach us to use a revenue generating service we should prioritise the customer with the biggest bank account. Traditional library ethics would suggest that you serve the first in the queue even if they offer a minimal (or no) profit or growth potential.

One of the ideas that crops up occasionally is that of an extra level of service for customers who pay a fee, not depriving non fee paying customers of anything but giving something a bit more for those who are prepared to make a financial contribution. Frankly it doesn’t sit well with principles I value such as egalitarianism**.

Local government ethics and integrity checks and measures are necessarily thorough but not always compatible with our lean startup approach. We might find a partner organisation that is the ideal fit for a planned service. Council processes dictate putting the contract out to tender, a process which frankly we don’t have time for. We are immensely grateful to the libraries leadership team for their trust in us and the freedom we have been given but it does mean that there is no one constantly overseeing our work.

So how do we walk the line and avoid stepping on anyone’s toes?

This is a bug part of the reason for this blog (and intranet articles, email updates, open working locations and tweets). The more people we expose to our work the more opportunity there is for people to flag their concerns with us and the less chance that we will get offside with anyone. 

@philiplib if you want to chat

*Not entirely, but that’s the subject for another blog post

**University of British Columbia had a similar service but offered it to donors instead