Competency A
Ethics
Ethics
Demonstrate awareness of the ethics, values, and foundational principles of one of the information professions, and discuss the importance of those principles within that profession.
Introduction
The information profession benefits from having multiple sets of documented ethical codes to guide its members depending upon their area of specialty or focus. The American Library Association’s (ALA) Code of Ethics and Library Bill of Rights, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ IFLA Code of Ethics for Librarians and Other Information Workers, the Association of College and Research Libraries’ ACRL Code of Ethics for Special Collections Librarians, the Society of American Archivists’ SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics, and other codes define practitioners’ ethical duties and provide guidance for fulfilling those duties.
These codified principles are critical to the profession because without them, individual practitioners would be free to act strictly according to their own morality and viewpoints, potentially to the detriment of the patrons they are supposed serve. Core Competency A states that information professionals must adhere to their profession’s guiding codes, and to do so, they must have thorough knowledge and understanding of these documents and how to apply the values and ethics they present.
Ethical Dilemmas
The competency also acknowledges that information professionals often have to confront ethical dilemmas that call upon them to make judgment-based decisions between two conflicting values or viewpoints. In these cases, there might be no unequivocally “correct” ethical choice or resolution, but rather one that requires a balancing of and compromise between two equally valid principles. Still, and perhaps even more so, these dilemmas demand that the information professional be familiar with the proper codes, understand the values and principles at work in a particular situation, and take actions that uphold their profession’s standards of behavior.
The ALA’s (2021a) Code of Ethics professes in its introduction that it can serve information professionals and other library employees “as a framework for dealing with situations involving ethical conflicts” (para. 1). The first principle of the code stresses the need for “accurate, unbiased, and courteous” (bullet 1) information, and Cassell and Hiremath (2018) say that “This statement is at the heart of good reference service, which strives to provide high-quality information and information to all” (p. 4). This is what the profession stands for.
This and the other principles in the code of ethics, together with the Library Bill of Rights, cover some prominent ethical themes that I explored in my coursework, with privacy being one of the most prominent.
Privacy
Privacy is one of the foundational principles of the profession, as evidenced by the Library Bill of Rights’ statement that all people “possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people’s privacy” (ALA, 2019, Policy VII).
One of the major considerations when it comes to privacy is the collection of patrons’ personally identifiable information (PII). With computer check-out systems and online services, it is very easy for libraries to gather PII, and there are good reasons to do so, ones that benefit the library and patrons alike. For instance, patrons might want to have a record of which books they’ve checked out, possibly in the event they want to revisit a book in the future. Michalak and Rysavy (2019) also noted the correlations researchers are able to make between university library use and things such as grades or student retention (p. 277), insights that would be very difficult to derive without PII.
However, in studying the issue and taking the profession’s ethics into consideration, I came to believe that librarians should give patrons the option of having their PII retained, but if the patron does not explicitly ask for this, then it would be a breach of privacy for the library to keep the PII. The American Library Association (2021b) defined privacy as “the right to read, consider, and develop ideas and beliefs free from observation or unwanted surveillance by the government or others” (para. 1). As long as librarians retain PII, there’s the potential for this type of observation and scrutinizing to occur. Furthermore, in my classes I learned that librarians can often feel pressured or maybe even a moral responsibility to breach a patron’s privacy by sharing their library usage—an ethical dilemma that could perhaps be avoided if the library didn’t keep the PII in the first place.
What my coursework also taught me is that in the face of these and similar ethical dilemmas, the librarian should follow the guidance of their profession’s principles and prioritize the patron’s privacy over research benefits and other considerations. If a patron believes a library might divulge what they (the patron) have been reading, viewing, or listening to, it might make them reluctant to seek out information they want or need—perhaps out of embarrassment or fear of discrimination or persecution—and it thus becomes a barrier to access. In this way, privacy is closely linked to intellectual freedom.
Intellectual Freedom
Indeed, the ALA (2021b) claimed that privacy “is the bedrock foundation for intellectual freedom” (para. 1). The ALA has another document explicating its stance on the matter of intellectual freedom. Its Freedom to Read Statement declares that it is the information professional’s role to resist censorship and to protect people’s freedom to read “by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings” (ALA, 2004, para. 6).
However, this freedom to read can sometimes push up against other rights, such as copyright law and the right to privacy. My coursework made me aware of these tensions and how librarians and other information professionals must make many decisions that affect different patrons differently.
Again, professional codes and principles can provide guidance, but due to the nature of ethical dilemmas, there usually isn’t a clear-cut “right” answer. For example, the ACRL Code of Ethics for Special Collections Librarians cautions that “Many special collections materials . . . contain collection contents that are sensitive to individuals, organizations, and/or record creators” (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2020, Privacy and Confidentiality section, para. 3), which is an argument for respecting personal privacy and confidentiality. However, archivists and librarians also have a responsibility to the public and its right to access information. My coursework has taught me that the best course forward in these conflicts is to follow the guiding principles as closely as possible in respecting the rights of all parties involved, and make decisions based on determinations of what must be done (copyright law, journal embargoes, etc.) first, and what should be done (individual access, freedom to read) when possible.
Evidence
Evidence 1: INFO 284 Archives and Research Management: Special Collections – Ethics
This assignment asked students to choose one of several scenarios and consider whether it presented an ethical dilemma. The scenario I chose involved the journals of a poet whose murder was tied to his race and sexual orientation. Complicating the matter were the fact that some of the journals said “Do not read” on the cover, and that the poet may have written about friend or lovers in the journal. In addition to deciding whether or not to grant access to the papers, I also had to decide if access should be restricted and whether or not to exhibit the materials. This scenario thus did pose a dilemma that pitted privacy against the public’s right to information.
This assignment shows my ability not only to think through the nature of an ethical dilemma and its ramifications, but also to identify resources the information professional can consult to help in making a decision as to how to come to a resolution. It demonstrates my understanding that, when faced with an ethical dilemma, I must set my personal feelings aside and try to be as objective as possible by taking guidance from applicable laws as well as my institution’s policies and my profession’s values.
Evidence 2: INFO 234 Intellectual Freedom – Library Bill of Rights
In addition to providing the Library Bill of Rights, the ALA also posts various interpretations of that document’s Articles in order to give information professionals further guidance in applying the principles to real-life situations. In this assignment, I had to select five of these interpretations and then, for each, choose a specific passage, provide my own thoughts as to what it means, and give one example of how a librarian might uphold the cited language and another for how they might violate it.
In a future role as an information professional, I might find myself in a situation that requires me to draft or follow policies that impact patrons’ ability to access information. This assignment shows that I am able to understand and interpret my profession’s guiding principles as they relate to specific situations involving access and other patrons’ rights. It further shows that I can be thoughtful and deliberate in making a decision that is in line with these values, and that I can recognize violations of principles, which is a prerequisite to being able to fight and rectify the violations.
Evidence 3: INFO 234 Intellectual Freedom – Filtering
For this assignment I had to take what I learned in class about how internet filters work, the different laws that govern how they may be employed, how they impact users’ access to information, and the resulting ethical dilemmas they pose, and then apply my knowledge to answer questions as to whether I would filter patron or employee access in a hypothetical library. I came down on the side of not filtering access for patrons or employees, and I had to justify my decision in detail with a message to those who would want me to use filtering software at the library.
This assignment shows my ability to apply professional association code of ethics and guidance to making an informed decision about an ethical quandary. It shows that I am able to back up difficult decisions with logic, and to further support my reasoning not only by citing specific guidance from my profession’s documents on values and ethics, but also with research-based facts.
Conclusion
Being aware of, understanding, and being able to apply professional associations’ documented codes of values and ethics is of paramount importance for information professionals. Unfortunately, the existence of these documents does not guarantee enforcement. In my coursework, I saw real-world examples of, and even spoke to, librarians whose viewpoints and practices departed from, for example, the ALA’s stance on patron privacy and access to information. One librarian I interviewed had almost no reservations about filtering software, claiming (I believe falsely, based on my research on the topic) that the technology is good enough these days to not over-block content. This same librarian believed that patrons should not expect any amount of privacy when using library computers, which I believe also goes against ALA’s position.
While there is room for a wide range of opinions on these matters within the profession, I was surprised to see such deviations from the profession’s fundamental values. My coursework has taught me the need for information professionals to regularly refresh their knowledge of and continue their education on these values and ethics in order to protect patrons’ rights and promote intellectual freedom.
References
American Library Association. (2004, June 30). The freedom to read statement. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/freedomreadstatement
American Library Association. (2019, January 29). Library Bill of Rights. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill
American Library Association. (2021, June 29). Professional ethics. https://www.ala.org/tools/ethics
American Library Association. (2021, October). Privacy. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/node/466/
Association of College and Research Libraries. (2020, June 19). ACRL code of ethics for special collections librarians. https://rbms.info/standards/code_of_ethics/
Cassell, K. A., & Hiremath, U. (2018). Reference and information services: An introduction (4th ed., pp. 3–13). https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1863462&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Michalak, R., & Rysavy, M. D. T. (2019). Data privacy and academic libraries: Non-PII, PII, and librarians’ reflections (Part 2). Journal of Library Administration, 59(7), 768–785. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2019.1649969