Library ethics for non-librarians - Statement VII

ALA Library Code of Ethics Statement VII: 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.

Distinguishing between our personal convictions and professional duties is one of the narrower tight ropes we walk as librarians. Well, educators as a profession. The addition of information technologies into schools and libraries has not made upholding this standard any easier. This statement should be addressed on two levels: policy and resources.

Policy
I hear many concerns and questions about information access policies, especially from teachers and librarians who believe their school guidelines are too restrictive. Should students have access to email? To chat? To music and video files? How much printing should a student be able to do? For what purposes? Should students be able to use the Internet to play games? To check sports scores? To find jokes and pictures of questionable taste? Technology has made circulation rules (three books per student) seem quite simple.

As was stated earlier, good rules should reflect the philosophy of the institution and create ownership of the library program by staff, students and parents. A good advisory committee that has as one of its charges oversight of library rules can help do this. The technician or IT manager whose responsibility includes network maintenance and security is an important member of such a committee. When the lines of communication open up between those whose expertise is in technology and those whose expertise is in education, intelligent, workable rules for student and staff result. If a teacher, student or parent disagrees with a library policy, reconsideration of the policy by the advisory committee is an effective means of addressing such a difference. 

Resources
We owe it to our students and staff to keep our personal feelings on issues from restricting their access to information, as well. (Remember Ethical Statement I? We provide the highest level of service to all library users through … accurate, unbiased, and courteous responses to all requests.)

I have political biases. Ask me about gun control, abortion, immigration policies, homosexuality, mass transportation, global-warming or the President, I will happily give you my opinions – some more informed than others. But as a librarian, I have prided myself in not allowing my personal convictions about specific topics to dictate the range of materials I make available to users.

This seemed to be relatively easy when our libraries offered users a limited range of print resources. If I ordered the SIRS Research folders, Facts-On-File titles, and Opposing Viewpoints books along with both The Nation and The National Review magazines, I thought I had all sides of most controversial issues covered.

But the Internet and online services have given us access to an unimaginable spectrum of opinions, now readily available to students and staff in even the smallest of school library media centers. Scholars, pundits, wackos, and 7th-graders all can and do publish “information” online, undistinguishable by appearance or availability. The information presented by businesses, non-profits, “think-tanks,” and other sites maybe be accurate, but heavily biased. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that there is no “supported” belief that cannot be found on the Internet. (Want a recipe for spotted owls? It’s easily found.)

While the availability of misinformation or biased opinions is often confusing or can lead researchers to make choices or form opinions that are embarrassing, there is a profound and very serious dimension to this issue as well. Increasingly students are using the Internet to meet personal needs and for school assignments that ask them to solve genuine problems. Making good consumer choices, health decisions, and career choices are a part of many districts’ curricula. Gaining historical background and perspectives on social, scientific and political issues through research is a common task expected by many teachers.

Ethically, we cannot rely on the “free” Internet alone to meet the information needs of our patrons. The availability of resources that have been edited and selected for their authority is perhaps more essential than ever. It is our ethical duty to provide print reference and trade materials at reading levels accessible to the age of the student, a range of periodicals related to the curriculum and personal interests, and subscriptions to online resources such as content specific databases and full-text periodical databases. We also must teach students about and facilitate their access to materials that are available through interlibrary loan.

But even more importantly we need to teach our library users to be able to evaluate information for themselves. Were I the Grand Panjandrum of Libraries, I would instantly add Johnson’s IXth Statement to ALA’s Code of Ethics: We teach our library users to be critical users of information.

Some established guidelines for the accuracy and reliability of information seem relatively simple to teach:

• Authority. Who compiled this information or offered this opinion and what is author’s expertise?
• Age. How old is the information?
• Verifiability. Is the information or opinion found similar to that in other information sources?
• Bias. What is the reason the information has been compiled or opinion offered? Does the author have some vested interest in the reader sharing his or her opinion? Who sponsors this site and how might the sponsor profit from convincing a reader to form specific beliefs?

Establishing the “authority” of information sources dealing with controversial social issues can be challenging if the educator wishes to honor the religious or political views of a student’s family, especially when those views differ radically from one’s own. Commentaries on environmental issues, for example, offered on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and on the Rush Limbaugh Show may be seen by some parents, some teachers, and by oneself as having differing degrees of value and reliability. This is compounded by the degree to which people at both ends of the political spectrum are more reliant on dogma or doctrine than on a thoughtful review of evidence to help them make decisions.

Yet as ethical educators, we need to ask students to support their conclusions and be able to defend the sources of the information with which they have chosen to do so. If parents are sufficiently uncomfortable with the spirit of open inquiry as a part of education, I believe they should consider enrolling their children in a non-public school that reflects their specific set of beliefs.

For countries like ours founded on democratic freedoms and individual choices, the ability to analyze information should be the most important goal of our schools.

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