I hope you had a great weekend! You should by now have completed the PASS course and I will be updating the gradebook this week accordingly. This week our topic is LIS values and to that end, I would like you to read chapter 10 in the Rubin text. Also please note that the scholarly communications assignment is due by this Sunday; once you have completed it, please upload it as a word document into the assignments tab in Canvas under the designated heading.

It might seem to you that the values of the profession that we discussed the first class weekend and which we continue with this week seem rather self-evident. This is far from the case, however, as comparing our profession's values with that of another illustrates. This week's discussion asks you to compare/contrast the ALA ethical statement with that of the American Historical Association and identify similarities and differences between the two. You can find the links and discussion prompts in the week 5 module. Note that you should respond to at least one classmate's response (though you may certainly do more than that).

After reading Rubin this week, the library profession's ethics and values might strike you as self-evident. But that is not necessarily the case. An individual in another profession, for example, might be able to make a reasonable case for censoring certain kinds of information.

One of the best ways to think through what one's profession stands for is to compare it to the values and ethics of another. In an effort to get you to think more clearly about the values and ethics of librarianship, I would like you to read the ethical statements from the American Library Association (ALA) and American Historical Association (AHA).

ALA: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/corevalues (Links to an external site.)

AHA https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/statements-and-standards-of-the-profession/statement-on-standards-of-professional-conduct (Links to an external site.)

After having read both, write a long paragraph reflection. You might consider: Are there areas where both professions share similar values? What are some areas where librarians and historians might part ways? What do you think accounts for these similarities and differences? Why do you think the ALA's ethics and values evolved the way they did?

In addition to posting your own response, please read your fellow classmates' posts and respond to AT LEAST one, though you are certainly encouraged to do more.

There exists a long symbiotic connection between the Historian and the Librarian. The Historian is the oldest storyteller in human history. Recording, interpreting and teaching the lessons of the past to the present. The Librarian is the oldest collector in human history. Preserving, cataloging, and disseminating the collected wisdom of the past to the present. The Historian comes first, making the Librarian possible – providing the materials for the Librarian to catalog and index. And then the collection of the Librarian nurtures the imagination of the Historian in a-hopefully!-endless cycle.

Both vocations have had their share of ethical lapses throughout the centuries. Librarians have censored books, rewritten materials, and hoarded access to their collections. Historians have been jingoistic, culturally insensitive, and slavish partisans of theoretical approaches. As each as evolved from its foundational figures, Herodotus in the case of history, and Dewey in the case of librarians, there has been a corporate reflection on the values and practices that are held sacred and normative and those that might be considered aspirational. With the wisdom of hindsight and regret at past mistakes (Jim Crow era library practice, eugenic theories of human development), both the ALA and AHA created professional codes of conduct as part of the general practice of organizational behavior and to signal the high professionalism of their calling.

And because of this signaling function, one should reflect on the dual audiences that the ALA and AHA both address in their ethical codes. One audience is composed of the members of the organization. For this audience, the ethical codes act to inspire and guide. Setting normative practices for the profession, standards for ethical behavior and aspirational goals. The other audience is external. Consisting of the media, political bodies, and other disciplines. To these groups, the ethical codes are meant to demonstrate inflated professionalism, high purpose, and act as a defense against the misbehavior of individual members of the organization - In effect saying, don’t judge us by the actions of a single member.

With these thoughts in mind, let’s examine the two groups statements in closer detail.

Both the ALA and AHA share values against discrimination in employment practices, a desire to promote general democratic values, and, whenever possible, equality of access to the material resources of the profession. Both set aspirational goals of serving the larger needs of humanity – librarians through the preservation and the free & open access to all works of human scholarship and creation – historians through their creations narrate and interpret the past for all humanity. Both recognize the primacy of the 1st Amendment of the Constitution as a normative standard of their professions but attempt to balance this primacy with a potentially contradictory impulse to prevent discrimination and bias from influence their practice. Both ethical statements recognize the tension inherent in absolute free expression (i.e., Intellectual Freedom) and social expediency of limiting that free expression when it can upset social norms or to promote values centered on diversity. Both groups profess a strong commitment to its role in education and teaching. The ALA promotes lifelong learning and the AHA makes clear the foundational goal of the historian to narrate and interpret the past to make its lessons clear. Both groups make a strong commitment to preservation. The ALA preserves the products of scholarship in a neutral spirit that all things have value; the AHA preserves the story of humanity. Both have planks regarding the self-interest of the profession to promote credentials that set members apart from ordinary citizens. The ALA promotes the MLS credential, the AHA promotes a more general value of integrity – demarcating the historian from the journalist and the writer.

Where they begin to diverge is over questions of privacy. The ALA places a very high value on the individual’s right to privacy going as far as to oppose government legislation like the PATRIOT Act to prevent the reading habits of patrons being available to government agencies. The AHA places a high value on the integrity of practice and demands that research be conducted in the open, without plagiarism, and with any potential bias acknowledged. The ALA also promotes a broad definition of social responsibility that can lead it into areas beyond library practice. The AHA lacks that commitment in its ethical statement. The ALA also has a very self-interested value it labels “The Public Good” which commits the ALA to defending libraries from being managed by private companies – questioning the commitment of non-public bodies to support the ALA ethical standards. And in very general terms, the library promotes values of neutrality – withholding judgment over collection materials, opposing ratings systems, and labeling works. The AHA is committed to a more polemical stance. Individual historians are free to express their opinions and judge the work of other historians in a framework of critical dialogue – as long as they maintain current standards of acceptable forms of bias.

At their heart, both groups standards attempt to navigate between absolute commitments to the freedom of the individual conscious and notions of social utility and social responsibility. And as a future librarian, I feel proud to be joining this conversation.