I would like to "tease" out from Malcolm Dobson something he said about
communities and professional ethics, as I sense that he has put his finger
on something vital. I noted what Frances Hendrix said in reply to Malcolm
about the importance for a library service to know the community, or
communities, it was put there for. She is certainly right to say that it
would be foolish for a library service to shun that basic research.
Having said that, and at the risk of putting words into Malcolm's mouth, it
seems to me that the ethical duty of a librarian, professionally graded or
otherwise, is to deal with the individual clients who present themselves,
of their own free choice in the library for what will always be a face to
face personal transaction. For me, if not necessarily for anyone else, this
is the battleground on which professional ethics is practiced. Yet so much
of what goes on now in the profession appears to be about the implemenation
of policies emanating from government bodies, policies which are clearly
designed to effect a solution to something called social exclusion. When
chief librarians gladly throw themselves into this latter type of activity
(there is very often money attached to such projects) they seem to forget,
or affect not to care, that what they are doing is in fact deeply
political. If challenged on this I imagine that they would say that it is
for the benefit of the community, and besides, it is official policy.
I have never understood how one can stand in an ethical relationship to a
community. For me, it is grounded in personl, one to one encounters, and it
needs to be apolitical in the context of a profession (any profession). I
am hoping that this is what Malcolm was trying to say, but if not I offer
my apologies to him. The subject is of course open to further
discussion!
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