Purpose & Goals

Libraries are faced by a growing set of challenges with significant ethical content. Their ‘goodness’ is being increasingly judged and challenged on contributions to wider societal issues concerning the common and public good. Libraries are required to measure up to an implicit set of virtues which are critical to their credibility, their share of resources, and in some cases to their very existence. In the academy multiple definitions of excellence and political influences can cause uncertainty and confusion. Ethical challenges have been met positively by libraries, often ahead of their parent institutions, but mainly through one-off projects and initiatives, rather than as part of a holistic framework for library relational, reputational and transcendent strategies. This paper is intended to further debate by providing an introduction to virtue ethics, and seeks a conversation on its relevance and application to the understanding of libraries, and its potential absorption into assessment programs and projects. The ultimate aim of this study is to extend the understanding of the excellent research library, and to close the gap between library values and ethical behaviors within organizational strategies and practices.

Design & Methodology

This paper builds on doctoral work on library value, and seeks specifically to apply virtue theory to the organization, management and leadership of research libraries. The method of investigation has included an intensive period of desk research on the philosophical and psychological foundations of virtue ethics and its contemporary applications, with subsequent contributions to conferences and the literature on practical wisdom (phronesis), difference and diversity, loyalty, and the social turn in library research. An empirical investigation into research library leadership and organization across world-class universities in North America and the UK was conducted in 2023. This work used methodological techniques which have not been widely used in libraries, but deserve increased consideration. This conceptual paper connects a number of different streams, and provides an introduction to the long tradition of virtue theory in classical and modern philosophy. This idea has been attracting increasing interest within management literature and practice over the last forty years, resulting in its application to organizational excellence, character, leadership and phronesis (practical wisdom) within education, the professions, public administration and business. Discussion and application of this ‘big idea’ to libraries seems absent.

Conclusions

In times of pressure and financial constraint, some aspects of library excellence might be traded off, but what cannot be lost is a reputation gained by moral excellence. This depends on libraries behaving justly in relation to fair dealing, offering fair witness, and in equitable resource allocation and treatment of their communities. If this argument is accepted, then measurement of performance in these areas should be core to assessment efforts.

Implications & Value

The value of the contribution is to provide the assessment community with a new lens from which to view their work, particularly for the strategic and transcendent dimensions of library organizational value. This perspective opens a potential agenda for further research and development work for libraries to incorporate ideas of virtue into their ongoing assessment, strategy and practice, and also into professional and leadership education and formation.