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Re: ethical question



A lot depends on the institutional culture of your workplace.  Many -
unfortunately, not all - employers support professional development.  These
policies are sometimes explicit, so check with Human Resources to see if
there are guidelines already in place.  As your article will highlight the
CIA's collections and generate positive publicity, you would seem to have
an especially strong argument for conducting the research and writing on
"company time."  Everyone reading and contributing to this list during work
hours is doing something similar - engaging in a professional discourse.
The pay off for the institution providing the e-mail account and time to
participate in this and other forums will, in turn, be an employee who is,
hopefully, more knowledgeable, creative and better able to contribute to
the organizational mission.  You could argue that by writing this paper you
will increase your own awareness of the collections and identify records
that may of particular interest to specific audiences, allowing you to
provide more proficient reference services.

I would be a bit leery of accepting payment for such a task, but that is an
issue best left for discussion between you and appropriate administrative
and/or legal staff.  At the bank, we have an ethics officer.  Perhaps you
have someone in a similar capacity at the CIA?  I would also suggest you
taking care to treat this as another work project that is given proper
attention, but does not unduly interfere with other duties.  Depending on
your deadline, you may need to contribute some personal time, but given the
potential benefits, I think you are fully justified in requesting time to
perform at least some of the work during office hours.

Good luck.

Joseph M. Komljenovich
Assistant Archivist
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Joseph.Komljenovich@ny.frb.org

Any comments or statements made in this transmission reflect the views of
the sender and are not necessarily the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York.



                    Christine
                    Crawford-Oppenheimer        To:     ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
                    <c_crawfo@CULINARY.E        cc:
                    DU>                         Subject:     ethical question
                    Sent by: Archives &
                    Archivists
                    <ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.M
                    UOHIO.EDU>


                    06/01/2001 10:35 AM
                    Please respond to
                    Christine
                    Crawford-Oppenheimer






I have been approached by a genealogy magazine about writing an
article that would explain how to use some of the types of items in
one or more of the CIA's special collections to research social
history of food (i.e., to get an idea of what your ancestors ate). I
would pass this by my supervisors in any case, but I am trying to
decide if I should present this to them as a project I would do this
on my own time (and thus, keep whatever payment the magazine offers
me) or a project I would do during work time (in which case, if I
received remuneration, it should probably somehow go to the CIA rather
than to me)--or ask them which of these they prefer.

There is the potential that if I did such an article, even if I
reference similar collections in other libraries, I would probably
attract a certain number of queries for information from our
collections, so even if I do this on my own time, it would have the
result of advertising the availability of our materials, which would
be a good thing.

Does anyone have comments about this, especially the "on my own time
or on the CIA's time" question?



Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer
Special Collections Librarian/Archivist

Culinary Institute of America
1946 Campus Drive
Hyde Park, NY  12538
(845) 451-1757
c_crawfo@culinary.edu

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