Touchstones, Talismans, and Totems:

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Touchstones, Talismans, and Totems

• Decision Making for Those who Lead

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Touchstones, Talismans, and Totems Decision
Making for Those who Lead

• New Jersey
• Academy of Library Leadership
• March 7, 2002

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We will take a journey this morning through the
brambles of ethics and decision making.
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Our guides in the journey

• Touchstones
• Talismans
• Totems

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At our core

• Libraries are service organizations.
• But sometimes we act as if we are in business
  for ourselves.
• We exist to serve the
• public,
• students and faculty,
• or those who work in our organization.

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What are decisions library leaders make?

• Service decisions service to those who may not
  be like us
• Financial decisions how to fund the services
  that are important
• Personnel decisions how we treat and work with
  library staff
• Policy decisions regarding collection
  development, management, discarding, access, etc.

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Scenarios These are taken from real case
studies.

• Childrens Fines -- Children are keeping their
  books long after the due date. One branch manager
  suggests raising the fines from 5 to 20 as a
  deterrent. Do you urge the Library Board to
  endorse this new policy?

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Scenarios

• Blockbusters There is great pressure to stock
  the latest and greatest best sellers and to
  increase their numbers. The head of collection
  management suggests increasing the number of best
  sellers that the library will buy. Do you agree?

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Scenarios

• Out to lunch -- As a manager it comes to your
  attention that one reference librarian is not
  doing the work required. He is disappearing into
  the stacks during the day and reading rather than
  helping patrons.

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Scenarios

• Special Interests -- As library director you have
  scheduled the showing of two pro-labor films for
  labor day week Norma Jean (about a factory
  worker) and American Dream (an Oscar winning film
  by Barbara Kopple about labor union organizing in
  a meat packing plant). A high administratorcalls
  to ask you to cancel the film program since she
  thinks that the program may make the library
  appear anti-corporation.Those local corporations
  are funding us, she says. Do you cancel?

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Touchstones

• Norms or principles to live by are ways to test
  ourselves on whether we should take a certain
  action.

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Touchstones

• The decision is tested by applying the norms or
  asking if our decision follows the principles.

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Kinds of Touchstones

• Religious codes
• Codes of ethics
• Pragmatic norms
• Philosophical norms

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Pragmatic and Philosophical norms can be found in
literature

• Fiction and non-fiction can offer us what
  ethicists call cautionary tales and guides to
  live by.
• Notice the popularity of self help books.

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Demand for touchstones in literature

• The popularity of such books as those by Deepak
  Chopra, the Chicken Soup series, and
• Thomas Moores Care of the Soul are testimony to
  the fact that people want guidance.

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What the authorssay

• Blanchard and Peale offered three main
  touchstones in their book on ethical management.

Blanchard, K. Peale, N.V. (1988). The power of
management. NY William Morrow Co.
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Touchstones from The Power of Ethical Management

• When about to make a critical decision ask
  yourself these questions
• Is it legal?
• Is it balanced?
• How will the decision make you feel as a person?
• These arent the end of the story, but they can
  help in analyzing a possible course of action.

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Touchstones

• Heres another touchstone inspired by Blanchard
  Peale questions ?

How would I feel if I take this action and its
reported on the front page of the newspaper and
in the evening news on every television channel?
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Touchstones

• Cross cultural norms
• Dignity of life
• Honesty
• Fidelity
• Autonomy
• Justice (Fairness)
• Utility
• Beneficence

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Touchstones

• A common professional ethical norm
• Do no harm

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Talismans

• Two tools have proven helpful for all levels of
  work and all levels of decisions.
• They are
• The Stakeholder Web
• The Implication Wheel

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Talismans

• The Stakeholder Web
• The Implication Wheel
• Are
• both graphical ways to represent items to
  consider when making a decision,
• meant to be used in groups.

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Talismans

• The Stakeholder Web
• A stakeholder is
• Someone who has a vested interest in an outcome
• Someone who will be affected by a decision.

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Talismans

• The Stakeholder Web
• Why is it important to know who the stakeholders
  are?
• To anticipate how people will be affected
• To understand some unintended consequences
• To judge who will support and defend and who will
  oppose a decision.

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• Stakeholders Example
• An example
• Due to budget restrictions, cuts must be made in
  the library budget.
• One candidate for cutting is closing a public
  media center available in the headquarters branch
  of a library.

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What happened when the decision was made to
close the media center?
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Understanding the stakeholders might have
encouraged a different decision or it may have
helped the library staff prepare for the decision
that was made.
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Stakeholder Web

• The Stakeholder Web is a strategic management
  tool that can be used in order to help a team, a
  department, or an organization identify
  stakeholders.

Situation
The start of a Stakeholder Web
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The second Talisman is the Implication Wheel
Situation

• It employs some of the same graphic tools as the
  Stakeholder Web

Stakeholder Web
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The Implication Wheel

• One tool that can be used to help determine
  useful and fair policy is the implication wheel.
• The implication wheel was first developed by Joel
  Barker, a futurist and consultant, who began
  using it with policy groups, companies, educators
  and others in the late 70s.

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The Wheel.helps to

• identify,
• explore, and
• evaluate the short and long term implications of
  a specific decision or a specific change.

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Developing an Implication Wheel

• Establish the wording of the specific issue you
  will address.
• Write the issue in the form of a an action in the
  center (hub) of the wheel.
• Imagine the major implications of the action as
  spokes of a wheel. Write them down.
• Think of subsequent implications or
  sub-implications and write them down.
• Judge the negative or positive nature of the
  implications.

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An Implication Wheel
Example Monitoring e-mail to avoid sexual
harassment suits
Employees will be fired

• The library staff will monitor all e-mail
  messages

Avoid lawsuits
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Parent-child trust /-
Young children dont have the understanding of
overdue/fines, etc
Privacy of Library Records Rights of Children
Responsibilities of Parents
Less autonomy of child for developing interests -
Parent feels right to know childs
decisions/information /-
Childs trust in library as a resource may be
diminished or never develop-
Parents held responsible for lost/damaged/late
books
/- (green) mixed view - (red) does not
support action (blue) does support
action Impact font most heavily weighted
Get information in a timelier fashion
Easier for families who share cards
Should parents be given access to their
children's circulation records on demand?
Legal implications /-
Child may feel inhibited in what they select -
May have need for sensitive info
(adolescents/dont want parents to know)-
No legal basis for setting age limit /-
Different interpretations of privacy acts
( library systems within NJ
Librarys role is to provide access to material
and serve all ages -
All cardholders are entitled to equal privacy
protection -
Less parent complaints
Tracy Baker Claire McInerney
Librarys responsibility is to provide
confidentiality -
Parents may be more likely to discuss selections
w/children
Parents more likely to support library
Child is treated differently -
Easier on staff
Please refer to handout
Its good for children to experience respect -
Increased parental role in guiding reading
choices
Media reaction /-
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Totems

• Is an Ojibwe word meaning an object, animal, or
  plant that serves as an emblem of a family or
  clan.
• The second meaning is the family of clan itself.

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Totems

• Im going to expand that definition a bit to
  include people who we admire, the he-roes and
  she-roes whose spirits serve to inspire and
  energize us, especially those who give us models
  for ethical action.

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Librarian Leaders and Heroes
Lee Brauner, Director of the Oklahoma City
library, stood up for The Tin Drum video in a
censorship challenge.
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Librarian Leaders and Heroes
Karen Alexander manages the archives of the Miami
Tribe and an information center and library for
nine tribes.
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Librarian Leaders and Heroes
Karen Alexander manages the information center
and library for nine tribes. Here are some of her
patrons at work.
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Librarian Leaders and Heroes
Sandy Berman, a cataloger worked for years to
open access to information, for alternative press
materials in libraries, for library service for
the poor and the disenfranchised.
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Librarian Leaders and Sheroes

• Yvonne Farley, A West Virginia reference
  librarian, former director, former journalist was
  the 2001 winner of ALAs intellectual freedom
  award

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Librarian Leaders and Sheroes

• More about the intellectual freedom award can be
  found at the ALA site http//www.ala.org/news/v7n
  7/state_regional.html

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Honorary Librarian totems

• Meridel LeSueur 1900-1996
• Recorded the words of the people in poetry, prose
  and song. Her most famous book is The Girl, and
  her well known essay We Were Marching is
  anthologized in many works.

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Honorary Librarian totems

• The voice of the underprivileged, the poor and
  people of color, Meridel saw herself as a
  reporter and a book collector.
• She collected over 5,000 books during her
  lifetime that became the core of the Meridel
  LeSueur library.

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Having totems, role models, or guides

• Can help us make decisions. We can ask what our
  hero or shero (totem) would do in a certain
  situation.
• They can provide inspiration. If they could stand
  up and take a stance, we can too.
• It can give us courage to be leaders when we see
  the work of ordinary people who rise to be
  honored leaders.

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Lets review our ethical dilemmas from earlier
what would you do?

• Employee is out to lunch and hiding in the
  stacks.
• Special interests want to influence library
  programming.

• A movement to raise fines for childrens
  materials.
• Pressure to add to Blockbuster novel collections.

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• To be human means being and becoming as the
  philosophers say.  

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• We are at the core our own selves, our
  personality, our quirkiness, what we know, and
  how we do things. But to be truly human, we must
  also evolve, change, and become anew.  

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• This renewal is growth that refreshes our spirit.
  And our evolution means that we start each day
  with the opportunity to learn and to become even
  better at what we do. And that includes the small
  decision points and the big ones.

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Go forth and make solid, ethical decisions!

• Good decisions Good library karma

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Claire McInerneyRutgers UniversityDepartment of
Library Information Science

• Contact information
• clairemc_at_scils.rutgers.edu
• 732-932-7500 xt. 8218