Professional Values and Ethics in Knowledge Organization and Cataloging

Abstract

IntroductionEthics tell people how to act in ways that meet the standard our values set for us (http://www.ethics.org/faq.html#eth_what. Accessed May 21, 2005), and applied ethics is field that attempts to deal with specific of human action and to craft criteria for discussion of issues that might arise within those realms (http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/cavalier/80130/part2/II_preface.html. Accessed March 23, 2005). Professional ethics falls within the domain of applied ethics, and profession may be defined as a number of individuals in the same occupation voluntarily organized to earn living by openly serving certain moral ideal in morally-permissible way beyond what law, market, and morality would otherwise require (Davis, 2002, p. 3). In this context, professional codes of ethics provide guidelines for helping members of the profession develop ethical policies for their work and their workplace. These codes of applied ethics enunciate important general principles, but they do not necessarily help individuals deal with specific ethical problem. According to Beyerstein (1993), professional codes of ethics reflect the consensus of the professionals for whom they are written, and for that reason cannot also help resolve ethical cases on which no consensus exists. Thus, professional codes can only help in judging obvious cases in which no particular ethical difficulties arise.In the library and science professions, the codes of the professional associations include ethical statements that clearly apply to the practice of knowledge organization and cataloging (e.g., IFLA, ALA, ALCTS). These codes are subject to the constraint that Beyerstein (1993) recognized. That is, they consist of statements on motherhood issues to which no one in the profession would object. For example, all three professional codes include statements enshrining the professional ideal of access to information. IFLA suggests that library associations the obligation of the professional to facilitate the unhindered flow of and ideas...and emphasize the obligation of members to protect and promote the rights of every individual to have free and equal access to sources of information (http://www.ifla.org/VII/s40/ pub/devpol-e.htm. Accessed March 23, 2005). Similarly, access to is one of ALA's core values: All resources that are provided directly or indirectly by the library regardless of technology, format, or methods of delivery, should be readily and equitably accessible to all library users (http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/corevaluesstatement/corevalues. htm. Accessed March 21, 2005). Likewise, the ALCTS supplement to the ALA code of ethics states that ALCTS member strives to provide...broad and unbiased access to information (http://www.ala.org/ala/alctscontent/alctspubsbucket/alctsresources/general/alctsethics/ethics. Accessed March 23, 2005). At the global level, the right of access to is part of the United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (1948) (http://www.un.org/Over view/rights.html. Accessed April 3, 2005). More detail and discussion about the right of access to at the global level appears in Beghtol (2002).Despite the existence of an ideal for which such strong global and professional consensus exists, ethical problems for knowledge organization and cataloging may not be easy to identify and ethical decisions may not be easy to implement in any particular situation. In study of 37 association ethical codes, Koehler and Pemberton (2000) found that five groups of people needed to participate in discussions of ethics in general: users, employers, practitioners, the community, and society at large. The participation of the same five groups of people is presumably equally needed in cases of knowledge organization and cataloging ethics. …