INTERVIEW
Ethics and advocacy – why we need to talk about our values
A new piece of work to support advocacy work in libraries has put ethics and values at the heart of those conversations. Senior Lecturer in Information Studies at University of Glasgow, Dr David McMenemy, created the REVEAL toolkit and here he explains how to make best use of it, and why it is needed.
HOW we advocate for our library services is a something that shouldn’t be taken for granted. We need to think about why we are doing it and what we hope to achieve by it.
As budgets continue to be cut, so the need for effective advocacy increases – if libraries and information services are fighting for a share of a dwindling pot, then the advocacy on behalf of those services becomes ever more valuable. So how can we ensure that our advocacy is effective and why should we be thinking about the ethical values when we are talking about services? Reinforcing Ethics and Values for Effective Advocacy for Libraries (REVEAL) is David’s response to those questions. He says that while we may not always consider it an ethics-driven enterprise, advocacy has always been based around the values asso- ciated to the activity. He says: “Advocacy is making a case for something, and when done from the point of view of the tools of rhetoric, it is fundamentally a values-based activity. One of the three key elements of rhetoric, pathos, is about tapping into the emotional aspects of an argument to influ- ence the receiver of an argument. This is what we try to do with advocacy every day, and is usually based on arguments related to personal development, supporting indi- viduals and communities on their journeys
34 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rob Green (
rob.green@
cilip.org.uk) is Editor-in-Chief at Information Professional
through life by ensuring access to information. All of that is based on core ethics and values.” The REVEAL project has been funded by CILIP Scotland’s Research Fund and delivers a range of tools and practical advice, as David explains: “I conceived the REVEAL project because I felt there was a sense that advocacy for libraries needed to be embedded more in the ethics and values of librarianship, and that do so we needed to make that content available to as many people as possible.
“I submitted the bid to the CILIPS Research Fund in the autumn of 2022 and was delighted it was funded. I’ve been looking to do work like this for a few years, and the CILIPS Fund seemed like
October-November 2023
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