Freedom of access:
ethical dilemmas for
Internet librarians
Irina Trushina
The author
Irina Trushina is Senior Researcher and Assistant Deputy
Director on Research, National Library of Russia, St Petersburg,
Russia.
Keywords
Libraries, Ethics, Internet, Censorship
Abstract
Libraries depend on ethical principles more than any other
institution because library services are essentially human-
oriented. Most national ethical principles for librarians are
represented as professional ethic codes. Each of them eventually
consolidates the ideology, the paradigm of national library
services. Comparative analysis of national library ethic codes
indicates the intellectual freedom principle as the key point and
the superior ethical value for library services. With Internet
technologies implemented in library services, the principle
acquires a new significance and grave problems. Recent
information filtering capacities provide a radically new
censorship level, including anonymous censorship, violation of
user privacy in Internet communications. On the one hand,
librarians must follow the intellectual freedom principle, on the
other, libraries are humanistic institutions, and librarians have a
moral responsibility to the patrons, adhering to the value of
human life. This paper discusses these issues as they relate to the
Internet as well as the correlation of professional codes and their
implementation in library practices.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Introduction
The International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions Committee on Free
Access to Information and Freedom of Expression
(IFLA FAIFE) project on ethics of librarianship[1]
is widely known as an initiative within the
International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions (IFLA) to defend and promote the basic
humanrightsdefinedinArticle19oftheUnited
Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Codes of ethics adopted by library associations in
30 world countries are available on the FAIFE Web
site[2]. As each country has its own distinctive
features, some code texts required comment,
prompting Professor R. Vaagan of Oslo University,
specializing in library ethics, to undertake an
international survey. This project aimed to describe
current conditions and identify key issues of library
and information ethics in different countries in
terms of the information society. Among the
contributors were both professional librarians and
library scientists and the outcomes were published
in a volume of The Ethics of Librarianship: An
International Survey edited by project manager,
Dr Robert Vaagan (Vaagan, 2002).
The library profession probably needs ethical
principles more than any other. Library services as
human-targeted institutions have always been
subjected to both legal and moral regulation,
because no society can neglect the library image and
its activities content. Codes of ethics and conduct
are among the most commonly encountered
regulation forms to date. However, ethic codes for
librarians are a relatively recent phenomenon,
especially as compared with the Hippocratic oath, a
popular code of medical ethics since ancient times.
Most such library codes were approved in the late
twentieth century. As seen from the Table I, one
code of ethics (the American) was approved in 1938,
one (Canada) in 1966. Two codes were approved in
the 1970s and three in the 1980s. Most codes – 17
– were approved only in the 1990s. And so far, four
codes of library ethics have been approved since the
year 2000. The first code of library ethics was
created by the American Library Association in
1938, and the most recent ones by the Armenian
and French Library Associations in 2003.
As is shown by research on the history of the
formation of codes of ethics in different countries
of the world, which was made by us in 2003, codes
of ethics require a certain extent of professional
consolidation and maturity (even associations
dating back to the nineteenth century were unable
to recognize the need for the code for almost a
century). Ethics provides a basis for actual value
attitudes, and ethical principles govern
The Electronic Library
Volume 22 · Number 5 · 2004 · pp. 416-421
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640470410561938
416