I’ve been sitting on this post for a couple of months now . . . the subject still bothers me, so I thought why not publish it anyway . . . so here goes! My first post for the Room of Infinite Diligence.
I work in a research centre, and go out and about in the community a heck of a lot too, delivering presentations on my specialist subject and my collection’s resources.
I am fairly active on the social media front, mostly trying to inform and update people, and networking. But I have a bit of fun with it too.
I am very passionate about user-education and information literacy. I see this as my primary role, when out and about, and also in the Centre.
As part of my job back in the research centre, we also do paid research, for those customers who can’t come in to the centre, or who can’t do the research themselves. Its a great service, and also a part of my job that I enjoy.
I was a bit taken aback a while ago, to receive a phone call from a customer, who wanted to pay me to do the research for her daughter’s high school “dissertation”.
The daughter was much too busy to do her own research, as she spent many hours a week on sports training. Apparently she was a top athlete, represents her country, and couldn’t spare the time to come in to the library to do her own research.
The subject of the school project was outside my department’s specialism, but as a researcher and librarian, I offered to recommend some resources, send some books free to her local library via our reservations service – but, no her daughter was much too busy, she wanted me to actually do the research for her.
The customer service side of me battled furiously with the educator side of me. For a moment.
I took a deep breath, and explained very politely, that it would be better for her daughter to do the research herself, as it helped her with her learning and set her up for a lifelong learning path.
I was told that she always got librarians to do the research for her daughter (and named someone and went into specifics about a particular incidence) . . . that she’d used our research centre before, and that it was money well spent.
She replied that her daughter was a top student that got top marks for her projects at an IB school. Another deep breath. I offered more suggestions, more resources. Not interested “good bye,” she hung up.
I felt very sad. I did a bit of soul searching to see if I could have dealt with it differently, better. I worried about whether I had given good customer service.
Then I wondered about parents who think its ok to pay someone to do their child’s homework.
That sports practice is more important than academic “practice”.
Then I felt perhaps I’d failed, because I hadn’t delivered “user education” adequately. Or that maybe another librarian would have got a better result.
That perhaps I’d failed because I hadn’t made her understand (conflicted eh?)
But then this high achieving, high school sports star, also apparently achieves top marks on her projects. Perhaps that’s because she gets librarians to do the bulk of the work for her?
Question is, should I have stuck to my guns? If the mother hadn’t been upfront with me, I’d have done the research anyway, blissfully ignorant, unaware (you can still snow the best “reference interviews”).
Maybe that is what had happened previously, if other librarians had really done her research for her. Is it poor customer service to assert your opinion in such matters?
Did I discriminate in some way, by not quietly just doing the research for this student regardless? I wondered what the student’s teachers would have said if they had known. Should I have rung the school and given them the heads up? Or is that a bridge too far? Was I right not to? Is it any of my business what someone wants to do with the research they commission from me?
A colleague I discussed this with asked “what is the difference between arranging a contract with a paid researcher, and a well-off student going online to a paid assignment writing service?”
Could I have handled this differently?
What do you think? What would you have done?
THIS is exactly what this blog is for, posing the deep and multi-faceted ethical debates that we face as information guides to the deluge of information there is out there (I know, I am contributing to it. right. n.o.w).
Seonaid, you rock.
And now for the more thoughtful repsponse…
I’m actually going to go to your organisations website now and see if they have any electronically accessible policies surrounding the target audience of your paid research service…
Awaiting a reply at the moment.
Seonaid, I think you behaved appropriately and within ethical boundaries of your position of Librarian.
All I can say is things may’ve turned out a bit different if she’d been there asking you in person. Maybe you could’ve suggested that you’d be happy to speak to her daughter directly about her “dissertation” (final ever assignment in Year 12 or 13?) and what she specifically wanted help with in it.
I personally really don’t like doing a reference interview/query through another person. One of my top ten peeves I think.
btw, what’s an IB school?
IB is the International Baccalaureate, it’s an alternative to whatever the usual Year 12 qualification is in your state/country (eg here in NSW it’s the HSC). It’s a different system of learning and assessment http://www.ibo.org/
For what it’s worth, I think Seonaid did the right thing too – these days kids don’t even have to choose between sport/academic paths, the school systems are set up to let them do both by extending the time they spend at school so they can fit it all in. Trying to do it all at once is a recipe for disaster (speaking as someone with a high achieving Year 12 student) as the pressure on that kid must be enormous.
“A colleague I discussed this with asked “what is the difference between arranging a contract with a paid researcher, and a well-off student going online to a paid assignment writing service?””
The difference is she’s doing because it’s part of her education. The act of research is a very important part in learning and understanding. If I were a teacher I’d be quite concerned that someone else had done all the research (and quite unfair too). It’s no wonder she’s getting high marks when all the work’s being done by others.
I think you did right – but wow! Dilemma!
It seems unethical that this student is getting good marks for work she did not do. Ultimately, she is cheating herself, but she is also effectively lying to her school who will be marking her work in good faith.
I do think there is room for some ethical guidelines to be set up around your service if there was none available to you to fall back on. Perhaps something similar to the RUSA guidelines. We don’t appear to have anything apart from the Code of conduct from LIANZA which is a shame really. Or is it now part of the professional registration thing?
I saddens me that there are people out there who do not see the value of learning to learn and encouraging those skills in their children. Given the life expectancy of sustaining sport in a life time I am unsure of the wisdom of focusing on it. But if that is what this person excels at, they shouldn’t be held back either so where is the balance? Hmmm.
unfortunately this is typical of most attitudes to education these days. it is a product. you buy it. you pay your money and you get a degree (or whatever). what’s this “learning” stuff?
and yeah, ethically, you did the right thing Seonaid.
Thanks for your comments. Just to add, I didn’t at any stage refuse to do research as such. Just talked about what I could do for them. And I did refer to the fact that our role was to empower students.
I don’t like doing a reference interview through an intermediary either Hana – but have been quite used to parents coming in over the years, with their children’s homework/project sheets, and sending them away with books and information, and a list of reference sources (which is what I offered this mother). Sadly, the child was much too busy to read all that material herself – let alone come in.
I should have also said, that my team and more importantly my team leader thought I’d done the right thing – so I did feel supported. The colleague she named at the start of our conversation no longer works with us, and has moved on to better things – so was unable to comment.
A few years back, during a professional development “retreat” with the company I worked for in the UK, my Myers-Briggs personality type was said to be that of “an assertive-nurturer”. The facilitator at the time said that taken to its extreme, it meant that “I wanted to help everyone, and I was going to help them whether they liked it or not”, LOL.
So i guess in this case it translates to mean that my niggly feelings of failure are largely to do with the fact that in this case, I helped no one. I was unable to turn this into a positive. If she had come in in person, it might have been a different scenario.
Thanks all.
You handled the situtation well. What the student’s mother was asking you to do was participate in plagiarism. When her daughter reaches university she will get suspended for that so it’s high time she learned to do her own research or she will be found seriously wanting.
Did she say the name of the school? I’d be tempted to ring them up and innocently ask if they thought that was alright…
Yes, I know which school. I was tempted, but no I resisted.