The Australian Library Journal

The language we use...

The impact of a business ethics and a business motivation upon fairly traditional values and ethics has been little explored so far. What happens when we much more strongly think of clients and customers rather than rights of the public, and when other pressures really start to impact on the values inherent in terms such as the right to know and free access to information? [Horton W (1996) 'Most important for the people: Australian Libraries and the profession'. Australian Library Journal 45 [4]].

We were at the time less concerned about whether we could manage libraries well as we were about it being seen that we could manage libraries well. The context was, if I recall rightly, a debate about what properly constituted a professional syllabus. This was at the beginning of the shadow which was beginning to fall across all our lives: that of managerialism, now elevated [but not by common consent] to fill those parts of our affairs formerly occupied by religion, politics, ethics and science. MBAs were comparatively rare, and had not then been encountered in libraries. We still used plain language and thought of our institutions in terms of their contribution to the common weal rather than their profitability. Jolley's generation of library managers had all been journeymen or apprentices and had learned on the job, or in the case of research libraries, were that variably effective [qua management] hybrid the 'scholar-librarian'. What these autodidacts lacked in theoretical underpinnings, they made up for in nous, which some had in testosteronic proportions, and they would not in any way have been handicapped or restricted by an education in management, had it been available, and had they thought it would be of any use.

At some time, perhaps in the late 60s, we nailed our professional colours to the mast of librarianship, [as opposed to 'management'] and sailed into several fleet actions with this banner waving gaily over the smoke of battle. 'You can only make a library manager' we thundered 'out of a librarian!' The consequences of this were sometimes positive, occasionally comic - and on at least one occasion - close to tragic. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this stance, the underlying premise has long been shot away, for our profession as well as for many others. Wherever management is required - of a hospital, an airline or a country, for example, we do not require precursive [my sometimes mischievous spellchecker suggests 'perversive'] or collateral qualification or experience in medicine, aviation or government: it has even been suggested by managerial theorists that ignorance of the contextual field may be an advantage. At this point, a small voice murmured 'You'd better be sure what is meant by management'. So we looked it up - in Chambers' twentieth century dictionary:

manage...v.t. to train by exercise, as a horse: to handle: to wield: to conduct: to control: to administer, be at the head of: to deal tactfully with: (obs.) to husband, use sparingly: to contrive successfully: to be able to cope with: to contrive. v.i. to conduct affairs: to get on, contrive to succeed.

This leaves the field open to proselytism from other faiths, and it is an inevitable corollary that new dogma drives out old. Hence our rapid adoption of the rhetoric of commerce as the lingua franca of the profession. However, once we as librarians adopt the metaphors of the market-place, it becomes much more difficult to disavow its mores; utter the phrase 'the bottom line' in your professional discourse, and it will inevitably follow that it is this grossly over-simplified cliché which will structure the ways in which others, especially the providers of funds, perceive the ways in which libraries are managed. Once we begin to speak of 'customers', we leave the way open for a perception that we are just another retailer of products, governed by 'market forces', whatever they are. It will follow that those responsible for appointing the managers of libraries will look more and more to the morally-neutral world of the balance sheet for their recruits. The small breach in our defences resulting from the adoption of the principle of 'user-pays' may leave the way open for a more drastic penetration by 'market forces'; when we use the language of the market to describe our professional activities, we encourage this tendency. Bonna Jones and Warren Horton have done us a service in raising the issue for our consideration.

At the moment of going to press, we were informed of the death of Marjory Campbell Ramsay [1923-1998]. We hope to offer an account of her career and contribution in our August issue.