Discretion at the desk: Street-level bureaucracy and moral agency in frontline academic library workers

Academic libraries invest heavily in codified policies, yet frontline service often depends on discretionary judgment exercised in real time at user-facing service points. Drawing on Michael Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucracy and Bernardo Zacka's framework of moral agency, this conceptual article reframes frontline workers as de facto policymakers who translate incomplete, value-laden rules into lived practice. It argues that routine decisions reflect an unavoidable trilemma of responsiveness, efficiency, and fairness, and that discretion is an inevitable outcome of this work. The article concludes with recommendations for designing bounded, accountable discretion as a core feature of frontline academic library work.