Competency A

Competency A: “demonstrate awareness of the ethics, values, and foundational principles of one of the information professions, and discuss the importance of intellectual freedom within that profession.”

INTRODUCTION

Though the ways in which people access, use, and share information has continued to evolve with the advent of new technologies, the foundational principles of librarianship continue to inform how information professionals serve their organizations, communities, and profession. As such, it’s necessary to understand how information ethics, information policy, and intellectual freedom manifest in real world twenty-first century practice. However, to better understand the underlying philosophy of the information profession, I first want to explore Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science and what he terms ‘the vital principle’.

Like all great governing documents, the Five Laws of Library Science are open to both narrow and broad interpretation; they account for the current moment in which they were constructed while allowing for the future moment in which they will be applied.

Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science

1. Books are for use
2. Every reader his/her books
3. Every book its readers
4. Save the time of the reader/save the time of the library staff
5. The library is a growing organism

To that last law – “It is an accepted biological fact that a growing organism alone will survive. An organism which ceases to grow will petrify and perish. The Fifth Law invites our attention to the fact that the library, as an institution, has all the attributes of a growing organism. A growing organism takes in new matter, casts off old matter, changes in size and takes new shapes and forms” (Ranganathan, 1931, p. 382).

Freedom is, in and of itself, a progressive concept as it relates to librarianship as evidenced by Ranganathan when he chronicles the “freedom” of the book from the 16^th to 20^th century.

The fifth law looks to the future—that is, the foundational principle of the information profession can be seen as ‘the vital principle’. Librarianship is progressive. I don’t use that term as a code for politics but rather to suggest that librarianship inherently imagines its own future and its own potential for evolution; that is how it has sustained itself through the previous radical changes in information behavior and that is the only way it will sustain through the radical changes inevitably to come.

To wit: “The Vital Principle – But the vital principle of the library – which has struggled through all the stages of its evolution, is common to all its different forms and will persist to be its distinguishing feature for all time to come – is that it is an instrument of universal education, and assembles together and freely distributes all the tools of education and disseminates knowledge with their aid. The vital principle – ‘the spirit of the library’ – persisting through all its forms is like the inner man [or woman]” (p. 415).

I think it’s worthwhile to keep this foundational idea in mind as I now explore the documents which govern present-day librarianship and the tensions that arise in their interpretation and practical application.

The American Library Association was founded in 1876 and states as its mission “to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all” (ALA, 2017) and its constitution can be found on the organization’s official website.

In line with its stated commitment to ensure access to information for all, the American Library Association’s web page on Professional Ethics includes both the definition of intellectual freedom as determined by the Intellectual Freedom Manual, 7^th Edition as well as the Professional Code of Ethics.

“Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate, and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of work, and the viewpoints of both the author and the receiver of information.” – Intellectual Freedom Manual, 7th edition

The Code of Ethics for information professionals as stipulated by the American Library Association consists of eight key principles including:

1. We provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources; equitable service policies; equitable access; and accurate, unbiased, and courteous responses to all requests.
2. We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources.
3. We protect each library user’s right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted.
4. We respect intellectual property rights and advocate balance between the interests of information users and rights holders.
5. We treat co-workers and other colleagues with respect, fairness, and good faith, and advocate conditions of employment that safeguard the rights and welfare of all employees of our institutions.
6. We do not advance private interests at the expense of library users, colleagues, or our employing institutions.
7. We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources.
8. We strive for excellence in the profession by maintaining and enhancing our own knowledge and skills, by encouraging the professional development of co-workers, and by fostering the aspirations of potential members of the profession.

The Code of Ethics was originally adopted in 1939 and revised most recently in 2008. It seeks to break down the broader concept of intellectual freedom, as innately requisite to the information profession, into practices and behaviors to be employed by every practitioner working in the discipline of information science.

While these documents are valuable guiding principles in shaping our practice, there are many thorny questions that exist around some of their core concepts including intellectual freedom and censorship, personal convictions, and unbiased (or ‘neutral’) information. As such, it’s necessary for each organization to have a clearly stated if adaptable information policy.  In Kate Marek’s look at information policy, she states that “…the policies, rules, and processes that govern information – what we call information policies – are fundamental to the tenor of society” (Marek, 2015, p. 281). Marek also includes Overman and Cahil’s list of seven key values to be considered when it comes to creating information policy including access and freedom, privacy, openness, usefulness, cost and benefit, secrecy and security, and ownership. Further, Marek makes the argument that context is important regarding information which raises questions about the neutrality of information. Because context is constantly changing, it’s important for information professionals to have a strong grasp of their organization’s information policy standards in order to make decisions about how to provide information access within their information organization. Even so, information policy can raise philosophical questions that information professionals should be knowledgeable about and prepared to consistently reconsider. With increased reliance on digital information sources, information privacy and cybersecurity have become a critical information policy.

In evaluating how to develop information policy, Ian Rowland established a four quadrant model that looks at information as being both open and closed, and as existing for the public good and the private good but even these quadrants are not definitive parameters for making information policy as they invite questions such as, what qualifies as private or public and more significantly, what qualifies as “good”? Is information in and of itself always already good? Every time you begin to answer one of those questions, additional questions pop up. Information policy standards are one way to start to engage with this ideological quagmire and the policy formulation process provides a clear model in how to develop information policy through the sequence of problem identification and agenda setting, problem formulation and policy making, budgeting, policy adoption and implementation, and evaluation (Marek, 2015, p.286).

Maintaining privacy and confidentiality are two additional imperatives that appear in the Code of Ethics and in the digital age, information privacy and cybersecurity are key aspects to any information policy. Givens (2015) works to define the concepts of information privacy, information security, and cybersecurity. She also outlines federal laws in place to protect information privacy including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, Family Education Rights & Privacy Act and The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, The Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996, and The Privacy Act of 1974. Each of these laws establishes the ongoing complexities of determining who and what should have access to information and who and what should have the right to information privacy. “Fair Information Practice Principles provide guidance concerning the handling of personal data” (Givens, 2015, p. 350). Some of the principles include transparency, security, use limitation, individual participation, accountability and auditing, data quality and integrity, and more.

Questions of transparency, privacy, and cybersecurity all came to the fore with the rise of WikiLeaks. In “Lead Pipers Weigh in on WikiLeaks,” three librarians consider Julian Assange from the perspectives of information activism, transparency, and the role of print artifacts in a digital scandal. Notably this article was published in 2010 and the information now available on Assange and the impact felt from the actions of WikiLeaks has evolved somewhat dramatically in the past eight years. Also notably, the librarians are unable to reach a hard and fast opinion on where they stand regarding WikiLeaks. Simply put, it’s complicated. I continue to believe that context is necessary in considering information and information policy. All information has a point of origin and that point of origin has a necessary relationship to the information itself. Additionally, the distribution and synthesis of information doesn’t occur in a vacuum. I think it’s interesting to consider that WikiLeaks, Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning appeared during a time when collectively as a country we may have felt there had been overreach and impingement on civil liberties by the Department of Homeland Security, NSA, and Patriot Act and were therefore possibly more receptive to digital whistle-blowers; people providing information that already resonated with or even validated a certain emotion people were feeling. Now that the context and consequence of the information providers and channels is more widely known, how we feel about them has potentially changed even though the information itself has not. But the release of The Post at the end of last year which celebrates The Washington Post‘s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers even further indicates that our feelings on classified information, who has access to it and how, remain as complex as ever.

In my first piece of evidence, I include a discussion post wherein I look at the work of Garnar, Jones, Dilevko, and Oltmann to broadly explore how the ethics of the information profession are considered and practiced in library environments. Garnar identifies shared core principles across the various professional organizations in the field of librarianship including access, confidentiality and privacy, democracy, diversity, education and lifelong learning, intellectual freedom, preservation, professionalism, public good, service, and social responsibility. Dilevko then looks at the use of trigger warnings in class syllabi on university campuses while Oltmann surveys public librarians on their interpretation of intellectual freedom. Garnar’s work provides  theoretical underpinnings for the more practical discourse explored in Dilevko and Oltmann’s case studies on intellectual freedom.

Intellectual freedom registers as an equally complex concept in the current moment in a discussion of the controversy surrounding the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week poster in 2015. The work of Knox and Oltmann (2018) features discussion from a number of librarians and information professionals around the country that ultimately reveals that 1) many have an ongoing dissatisfaction with the ALA leadership and specifically, the Office of Intellectual Freedom, 2) they hold differing interpretations of censorship and how it should be applied, and 3) many have uncertainty about how to serve as an ally to marginalized peoples within librarianship. Specifically, the article states “As shown in our research, perceived tension continues between the practice of social responsibility and support for other traditional values in librarianship such as intellectual freedom” (p. 7).

Knox and Oltmann’s work is instructive of the information profession in two regards. First, it clearly demonstrates the degree to which the American Library Association advocates for intellectual freedom through their sponsorship of the annual Banned Books Week. Additionally Banned Books Week, in which the association champions the reading of books which have been challenged or removed from libraries, warrants its own page on the association’s website under the Advocacy header wherein one can explore, celebrate, and purchase frequently challenged books. The ALA also designs an original poster to highlight Banned Books Week that is available for purchase (Knox & Oltmann, 2018).

Further, public libraries include information about Banned Books Week on their own websites and some public universities provide research guides through their library website with information and resources regarding Banned Books Week. Advocating for and providing access to banned and challenged books are practices required of today’s information professional as books continue to generate controversy and raise the specter of censorship as evidenced by the decision to remove Angie Thomas’s best-selling young adult novel, The Hate U Give, from school libraries in the Katy Independent School District in Texas.

In my second piece of evidence, I include a reader’s advisory reference interview that I used to further explore the issues of intellectual freedom and censorship in the context of INFO 210: Reference and Information Services. In my paper, a middle school student is inquiring about a Judy Blume book that has been removed from her school library and the librarian assisting her must decide how to proceed in providing access to information. Following the reference interview section of the paper, I contextualize the librarian’s practice in adherence to the ALA’s Code of Ethics through literature exploring the phenomenon of banned and challenged books (Curry, 2001). As books and other materials continue to be threatened by censorship, it’s necessary that information professionals understand and apply the principle of intellectual freedom in service to their community.

However, as Knox and Oltmann’s article also conveys, many in the profession have concerns about the ways in which the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom interprets intellectual freedom and censorship and their respective applications. Thus, it’s essential to understand the principle of intellectual freedom as defined by the American Library Association not only to recognize its enduring value to the information profession but also to possess the ability to critically interrogate and address its shortcomings in an ever-evolving information environment. As such, current and future information professionals must be able to see the concept of intellectual freedom not as a given or mandate but as part of an ongoing discussion that must be reassessed and adapted to best serve the profession and its constituents.

In my third piece of evidence, I include a paper titled “Self-Publish or Perish: An Ethical Imperative for Collection Development in 21st Century Libraries” which acknowledges the concerns around self-published titles but argues that their inclusion in collection development practices is ethically necessary in current and future information organizations. This paper was written at the conclusion of my collection development and management course and includes discussion of real world practices for integrating self-published titles in collections as informed by Robert Holley’s 2015 work, Self-Publishing and Collection Development: Opportunities and Challenges for Libraries, as well as theory informed by the examples of Sanford Berman and James Danky who viewed collection development as a political act. In a critique of ‘liberal neutrality’, Tkach and Hank (2014) write “it is for Danky the duty of the librarian in charge of collection development to collect things that could be construed as politically divisive or controversial. This duty is for the sake not only of being politically progressive but also for the purposes of following ethical standards for [academic] librarianship. In choosing to collect one thing over another, there is an implicit bias on the part of the collector that can lead to unintentional suppression of dissenting opinion and which therefore must be examined critically” (Tkach & Hank, 2014). While intellectual freedom argues the need for the inclusion of every voice, as I suggest in my paper, it’s equally necessary to acknowledge that marginalized voices have only recently been added to the conversation and thus, there’s an imbalance of equity in regarding all works as the same. The intentions of the Office of Intellectual Freedom point toward an ideal practice of information access but that practice can’t be ahistorical and must resist a hagiographic interpretation of the profession’s established principles.

EVIDENCE

Wk 14- Information Ethics & Intellectual Freedom (INFO 204: Information Professions)

In this discussion post, I first look at the work of Martin Garnar who identifies core shared principles across myriad information professional organizations as informative of their respective approaches toward ethical practice. I then contextualize the work of Barbara Jones on intellectual freedom as ‘important and complex’ through Oltmann’s survey of public librarians in Kentucky and their varying interpretations on intellectual freedom. I feel this discussion post reflects a consideration and acknowledgement of both the philosophical framework of the information profession as well as the tensions that arise in real world application.

Reference Interview Assignment (INFO 210: Information Reference Services)

In this depiction of a hypothetical reference interview between a girl in seventh grade and her school librarian, I wanted to explore the notion of banned and challenged books and how a librarian might respond to a patron’s request for such a title. In my hypothetical, the librarian elects to broach the subject of banned books with the student and frames their discussion through the inclusion of a professional library organization by making use of the ALA website. I include this assignment as evidence of Competency A because the interview and my written reflection articulate how advocacy of intellectual freedom is integral to the practice of librarianship.

Self-Publish or Perish- An Ethical Imperative for Collection Development in 21st Century Libraries (INFO 266: Collection Management)

This paper was my culminating assignment at the end of my course on collection development and for me, remains critical to the development of my understanding of how information ethics manifest in library practice and how I view the concepts of neutrality, social responsibility, and progressive librarianship. Within the paper, I provide a historical overview of the rise of electronic books and subsequently, self-published books and include a discussion of the concerns around quality of self-published works as well as their lack of conventional metadata useful for acquisition. However, I then argue for the inclusion of self-published titles in collection development through the following arguments: self-published titles are frequently genre fiction which has therapeutic benefits to underserved patron groups, non-fiction self-published titles are often useful primary resources on local histories and people and remain free of publisher sanitization, self-published work can also serve as value added to an existing collection, self-published authors often create supplementary material to market their work that libraries could include to promote the titles, embracing the culture of self-publishing through workshops and maker spaces further demonstrates a library’s value to its stakeholders and community, and finally, essentially, that self-published titles are an ethical necessity in twenty-first century practice. I include a look at the race and gender demographics of the publishing industry to highlight how the gatekeepers of ‘quality’ literature are primarily white men and thus, toward diversity, intellectual freedom, and equity of access, it’s critical to ensure the presence of marginalized voices in collection development and self-published authors, as those who exist outside the mainstream production model, are quite literally, on the margins. I conclude that the technology and process for self-publishing will continue to evolve and improve and it would behoove libraries to embrace this forward-thinking acquisition and access to information model toward ethical best practice.

CONCLUSION

The most recent evidence for the ongoing debate around intellectual freedom is found in the panel, Are Libraries Neutral?, which took place at the ALA’s Midwinter Conference in February 2018. Two panelists argued in favor of library neutrality while two panelists argued against the library as a neutral space. Additionally, four commentators were given the opportunity to respond to each of the panelist’s statements.

As I read this debate, I was heartened to see that questions I’ve been considering are necessarily part of the ongoing discussion in the profession such that they’re being discussed at ALA conferences. But it’s also humbling as one about to enter the information profession, to see that this debate remains unsettled within the profession and likely, professionals will continue to grapple with these complex questions as we move forward in an ever-shifting, ever-evolving information landscape.

So I return to Ranganathan’s vital principle and the idea that the foundational philosophy of our discipline is one that is always looking forward- that is, we must accept and embrace that change is a constant.

Stephen Abram’s look at librarianship (2015) reflects a similar theme when he includes the need for the twenty-first century information professional to possess a constant ability to adapt and adapt their information organization in line with trends, new technologies, and ever evolving information needs and use. Abram suggests that in order to develop this ability, one should consider a conceptual idea of what an information professional is; he writes that “information professionals are fundamentally about transforming lives” (p. 43). If an information professional approaches their goals and responsibilities with this concept in mind, it’s possible to feel less averse to changes and new practices within their information environment.

These discussions as informed by historically relevant best practices and governing documents reflect the true, enduring philosophy of librarianship. We are not guided by fixed notions of any one concept or principle, rather we are inspired to participate in an ongoing conversation around what it means to benefit and improve the information profession – to imagine the future.

References:

Abram, S., (2015). Librarianship. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (pp. 41-52). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

American Library Association. (2008). “Code of ethics of the American Library Association.” American Library Association. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/tools/ethics

Curry, A. (2001). Where is Judy Blume? Controversial fiction for older children and young adults. Journal of Youth Services in Libraries, 14(3), 28-37.

Knox, E.M., and Oltmann, S.M. (2018). Social responsibility, librarianship, and the ALA: The 2015 banned books week poster controversy. Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 88(1), 5-22.

Garnar, M.L. (2015). Information ethics. In S. Hirsch (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (pp. 298-299). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Givens, C.L. (2015). Information privacy and cybersecurity. In S. Hirsch (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (pp. 345-356). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Marek, K. (2015). Information policy. In S. Hirsch (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (pp. 281-288). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Ranganathan, S.R. (1931). The five laws of library science. [e-book]. Retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b99721;view=1up;seq=13

The leaky pipe: Lead pipers weigh in on WikiLeaks. (2010). In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2010/the-leaky-pipe-lead-pipers-weigh-in-on-wikileaks/

Tkach, D., and Hank, C. (2014). Before blogs, there were zines: Berman, Danky, and the political case for zine collecting in American academic libraries. Serials Review, 40, 12-20.