The Challenges of Facilitation and Ethics

In our last class, we simulated our book club and went through numerous discussions on our assigned texts. One of my biggest takeaways was that it is immensely different being a participant in a book club versus being a facilitator in a book club. I remember writing down in my notebook during our first discussion (when I was a participant) that facilitators should intrude less and leave time for silence. Yet, when it was my time to facilitate, I found it incredibly difficult not to interrupt and micromanage the conversation! There were times where I felt nervous about the trajectory of the conversation. I wanted the participants to focus more on the text at times than their personal experiences, which was made difficult because our participants did not really like our text! What I gathered from that experience was that you can do a little nudging in a certain direction, but it is ultimately up to the participants to guide the discussion the way they want to. This might mean that you do not cover all of the themes you had planned out, but that is not really the point. Fundamentally, book club is about encouraging participants to find their voice and be more comfortable having conversations where opinions might vary significantly. With that instructional goal in mind, it became easier to let go of my preconceptions and allow the discussion to take its course.

            Our readings this week focused on professional ethics, which I have always found to be an important topic, especially at UMSI. I have had multiple HCI students in the school talk to me about how ethics are not really talked about in a substantial way in their classes and they always seem astonished when I tell them of the robust conversations on ethics I have had in LIS and ARM classes. It is for this reason why I chose to pair the Silicon Valley ethics reading with the ALA Code of Ethics, which I find to be very interesting. The conflicts between following the law and following moralistic values found in the ACM document can be tricky because morality is subjective. The first principle in the ALA code of ethics is to provide service for appropriate resources. Who defines what is “appropriate”? And how does that conflict with the second principle, to defend against censorship and uphold intellectual freedom? What I like about the ACM document is that it admits that different values can conflict and that you need to apply thoughtful consideration in your ethical decisions.

One thing that strikes is the timing of how both professions started considering ethics. The ALA first adopted their code of ethics in 1939 and have revised them three separate times since then. The folks in Silicon Valley have either just now started thinking about ethics, since the election of Donald Trump, or last thought of ethics back when the Internet had just started. While I understand that the professions in Silicon Valley are young, and that librarians did not start thinking about ethics until the some 60 years after the founding of ALA, I found it astounding that no serious considerations of ethics have been made with all of the power and influence that Silicon Valley has been able to accrue the past two decades. I think dedication to values and ethics really defines a profession (it’s why I chose this one). The  people that develop technology need to start crafting their identity around those values and ethics just like the people who assist and serve communities that access technologies do.