I am sorry that Malcolm thinks that my "libertarianism" makes me unethical.
I am astonished by it. When I speak of "freedom of choice" I mean that
freedom that people laid down their lives for in the last world war. If
that war had been lost we would not be having this exchange of views:
indeed there would be no scope for any opinion differing from that of the
government if such an event had come to pass. I am deeply suspicious of any
government involvement in the professions (we don't want it in the legal
profession) and we should not tolerate it in the other professions.
We have, or had at any rate, a code of conduct which appeared to state that
there should be no political motivation in a librarian's day to day work:
that the client comes first. In order to achieve that, I leave my political
views at the door when I arrive at work. Chief librarians need to do the
same, but do they? Short answer, no, not very often, because there is money
to be had for the doing of "good works" (tackling social exclusion) and so
one convinces oneself that there cannot be anything wrong with this. The
goal is a desirable one, true, but there is a deep price being paid and I
don't think many people can see this, any more than they can see the air
they are breathing. If you are a chief librarian and are wearing two hats
at the same time, then you have already failed. I'll just say this one more
time: librarianship is not social work.
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