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Graduate School of Library and Information Studies

Professional Ethics

Codes

Bekker

Librarianship is a profession, and as such, it has a code of professional ethics.

There are different definitions of the word "profession."

  • One way to define it is to list the traits common to law, medicine, the church, and other occupations we traditionally think of as professional. (Professions rely on advanced education; they command respect and high salaries; they have codes of ethics.)

  • Another definition holds that a profession -- like a guild, or a union -- is a way of organizing work. When workers are organized in a profession, there is an assumption that the workers themselves are responsible for defining their tasks, accrediting their professional colleagues, guaranteeing the quality of their work, and so forth. By this definition, a "profession" is a way of organizing work that gives its practitioners high levels of both autonomy and responsibility. A code of professional ethics is a guide to autonomous practitioners, helping maintain high standards of service.

Barnes (1990), describes some of the considerations that go into making a code of professional ethics:

  • What type of code will it be? Some codes specify imperatives, while others list desiderata -- ideals to be aimed at, rather than imperatives that must be met.

  • How will it be used? Some codes are offered as definitive, intended to resolve all issues; others are intended as advisory, to be treated as you would treat a trusted staff member you can bounce ideas off as you ponder the pros and cons of an action. (Can a definitive code be truly ethical? Or does it impinge on the individual's autonomy in a way that is unethical by definition?)

  • How specific will it be? Some codes give a few general principles, while others try to cover every application or contingency. General principles can get you in trouble ("Be fair" may not be a helpful principle if you find that being fair to A involves unfairness to B), but so can excessive detail (how many ethical tenets can you remember in an emergency?).

  • Who will be the code's audience? Some codes are directed at members of the profession, while others are directed at the public. The first kind may emphasize the members' responsibility toward the public or their responsibility toward the profession itself, or may compromise, emphasizing actions which both promote the status of the profession and serve the interests of society. The second kind will tend to emphasize professional responsibility toward the public, and promote general knowledge of what can be expected from members of the profession.

 

Explore some codes of ethics online. How does each of them handle the four questions above? 

(For a longer list of questions and considerations, see Chris MacDonald's "How to Write a Code of Ethics," http://www.ethicsweb.ca/codes/.)

The ALA Code of Ethics

Barnes published his article in the Bulletin of the at a time when ASIS  (now the American Society for Information Science and Technology) was hammering out the ASIST Professional Guidelines, adopted in 1992. Ethics were in the air. Finks (1991) called for a new code of ethics for ALA; he quoted extensively from an unpublished 1976 Case Western Reserve dissertation by Johan Bekker, of South Africa, who called ALA's 1975 code "one of the worst . . . in existence." According to Bekker, a code of occupational ethics "should be directed externally, and not internally; it should exist for the benefit of society and not for the sake of self-interest; and ethics related to clients must transcend institutional . . . loyalties" (Finks, 1991).

 

A revised ALA Professional Code of Ethics was adopted in 1997 and amended in 2008. Study it, and compare it to Bekker's "Some Guidelines of Occupational Conduct for Librarians." How do the two differ, in spirit and detail? Apply each of them to at least one of the following scenarios: 

1) The mother of a teenager storms into the public library director's office, furious because her daughter has been allowed to borrow a book on reproductive health and birth control. The staff member on the scene added insult to injury by saying that it was the parent's responsibility to police her child's information consumption: "Librarians are responsible for helping people access information, not for babysitting," he said. The mother sees this as a gross failure to uphold a public trust. What should the library director say or do?  

2) The university budget has been slashed yet again, and all units, including the library, are urged to generate cash flow. Services should "sit on their own bottoms" whenever possible. The head of technical services goes to the head librarian with an idea: could the library's web site and online catalog be partially funded by advertising? If such an arrangement is feasible, what are the ethical pros and cons? (Adapted from Sullivan, 2002)

3) A vibrant young librarian has a stroke. She struggles heroically to regain speech and mobility, and her colleagues welcome her back to the busy reference department with joyful relief. But by the end of the first week, it becomes obvious that her short-term memory has been tragically impaired, and she is no longer capable of giving ready reference service. What should be done? 

Which code of ethics do you find more helpful in each case? Why?

Finks (1991) approves the disciplinary aspect of Bekker's ethics. "A viable code of ethics," he writes, "establishes discipline within the occupational group. It discourages and prohibits behavior that will bring the group into disrepute. It . . . [discourages] inferior practices." Should the ALA Code of Ethics be more rigorous in encouraging a high quality of service? How? 

Core Values

Bekker calls for librarians to "to optimize the value of recorded information for humankind." The preamble to ALA's Code of Ethics states that our profession is "explicitly committed to intellectual freedom and the freedom of access to information," and that we "have a special obligation to ensure the free flow of information and ideas to present and future generations." Our professional ethics are founded on values.

ALA's Congress on Professional Education (COPE) has recently been debating the core values of our profession; see the facilitator's guide to "WHO WE ARE: America's Librarians Discuss Their Professional Values," prepared by Maureen Sullivan, for details.

 

Are core values the same for all specialties within the field of library and information services? Librarians in publicly supported schools, universities, and public libraries tend to see information as a public good -- something that should be free to all. But what about librarians who work for corporations, where information is a commodity and proprietary knowledge is essential to the bottom line? What about librarians who work for the Defense Department, or other agencies where the free flow of information could have dangerous consequences? What about archivists, who may be able to obtain valuable papers only on the condition that they not be released to the public for years after the donor's death? Should one code of ethics cover us all? 

The Special Libraries Association "does not have its own Code of Ethics. The Association adheres to all good practices of information delivery. In general members have felt that their organizational environments have set the work ethics by which they are guided rather than a professional organization. Some examples of codes prepared by professional organizations are ALA Code of Ethics; ALA Library Bill of Rights; AIIP Code of Ethical Business Practice; ASIS Professional Guidelines; and SCIP Code of Ethics for CI Professionals."

Resolving Conflicts

One major assumption of the ALA Code of Ethics and the Library Bill of Rights is that librarians should support the free flow of information. This commitment may place the ethical librarian in conflict with federal law:

  • The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requires that school and public libraries must filter public Internet access to be eligible for federal funding. In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of CIPA. (See the ALA's CIPA pages.)

  • The 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, enacted soon after 9/11 and reauthorized in 2006, expanded the government's surveillance powers and limits the privacy of library users. In 2007, the Protect America Act further modernized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (For background, see the ALA's position statements on the USA PATRIOT Act, and guidelines for libraries and staff coping with confidentiality issues and law enforcement inquiries.)

 

What should librarians do when professional ethics conflict with the law of the land? 

1) A man in Middle Eastern dress is using a public access computer in the library. A staff member reports that he seems to be viewing anti-American material. Considering both the ALA Professional Code of Ethics and the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, what action should the library director take? ( ALA Committee on Professional Ethics,http://www.ala.org/advocacy/proethics.) 

2) The Supreme Court has upheld as constitutional the wording of CIPA. Head Librarian France Anatolia still believes that filtering public access terminals may expose the Rye Public Library to first amendment lawsuits. (See Jaeger and McClure, 2004). She proposes to the RPL library board that instead of filtering the Internet, they should decline federal funds, including LSTA grants and e-rates for Internet use. Nationally, federal support accounts for only about one percent of public library income, and Anatolia estimates that the figure is even less for the RPL. Could the RPL forego the money and maintain its principles? Board chair Chris Wright objects that the RPL belongs to a state-wide consortium, funded by an LSTA grant, which provides members with rapid interlibrary loan and access to major research databases. Refusal to comply with CIPA would force them to withdraw from the consortium, and would probably limit community access to information more severely than the filter. What should Anatolia do?

The ALA Professional Code of Ethics and Library Bill of Rights have brought practicing librarians into conflict, not only with the law, but also with their own personal beliefs.

Should librarians always support the free flow of information? In a 2000 Library Quarterly article, Frické, Mathiesen, and Fallis examined the assumption in the light of utilitarianism, natural rights theory, and social contract theory. They argued that "the right to access to information is not unlimited," but limitation "including censorship" could be appropriate "when such a limitation is necessary to protect a more fundamental right." Doyle (2002) critiqued their arguments, especially their "defense of paternalism in libraries, which would commit them to Internet filtering."

 

Additional Resources