Readings: Week 8

While reading this week's readings about ethics in librarianship, I thought back a lot to the class we had on ethics in SI 580, the introductory archives class, with David Wallace. I remember that as one of the most interesting lecture and discussion sessions that we had in that class, because it raised some big issues but made them very real. The biggest thing I remember Dr. Wallace emphasizing was that ethical decision-making is very much dependent on context-- on the situation, the people involved, your work setting, and above all your own personal values. And he said that everyone has to make their own decisions-- that what one person decides is ethically proper in a situation or is comfortable doing will not be the same for everyone else, and that should be respected.

This approach seemed a really sensible way to talk about professional ethics to me, and one that was much more sophisticated and realistic than a lot of what you see out there. Essentially, I think this approach is pretty much what the "virtue ethics" Lenker is advocating is. I definitely agree with Lenker that ethical decision-making can never just be a set of rules to follow or something hopelessly reductive-- it takes a lot of thought and a lot of consideration of various factors, and isn't going to be easy. I was especially glad that Lenker emphasized that your own personal values are as much of part of this decision-making as consideration of other people involved or the values of your institution, because often when we talk about "ethics" in professional contexts I think people forget that we're talking about people with their own moral principles, not automatons who can just blindly follow outside "rules." I thought it was good that in presenting his hypothetical scenario, Lenker gave a very human identity to his hypothetical librarian Clark, and gave information about "Clark" that has nothing to do with librarianship but would certainly be relevant to his own ethical decision-making process.

As for the ALA code of ethics, I was also reminded of what Dr. Wallace said when we talked about the SAA code of ethics (which is much longer and more complicated than its ALA equivalent), which at that time included at least one provision he strongly disagreed with. (I believe he mentioned the next semester that one particular provision he strongly objected to had since been removed.) Basically, he said that this may say a lot of nice things, but it's not as though it's some sort of binding rule. Yes, when you join the organization you may agree to uphold it, but you're not going to get kicked out or even penalized in any way for not doing so-- and how do you even measure "not upholding the code of ethics" in a situation like this? With this in mind, I pondered the fact that the ALA code was probably the product of great thought and deliberation by some committee, that it's undoubtedly gone through lots and lots of revisions over the years, and that most librarians still probably don't think about it that much. It's simply a tool in the process of ethical decision-making process Lenker described, but far from the only one or even the most important one.