Reflection on Class, 13 March

In last week's class, we discussed the ALA Code of Ethics. The discussion went somewhat differently than I had expected; another course I have taken featured a discussion of the Code, but that discussion didn't go much deeper than to apply the Code to various realistic scenarios in order to judge the best response. That's completely valid, of course, and a good way to teach what librarians are expected to do by many others in the profession. But I enjoyed the fact that we had a less clean and clear-cut conversation this time.
As some of my classmates have pointed out, a discussion about that ALA Code of Ethics should take into account that it is not binding. You can't be disbarred from librarianship for allowing a book to be banned. The ramifications for breaching the Code are social and informal, though they still may have a negative impact on a librarian's career or social life. Some librarians may chafe at that - why should they be held by a set of ideals that isn't even imposed by their profession itself, but by a particular organization within that profession? You could say that the concept of librarianship encompasses certain ideals (intellectual freedom, access to information, public service), but that's difficult to argue. When I Google "librarian definition", I get: a person, typically with a degree in library science, who administers or assists in a library. The same process with "library" gives me: a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for people to read, borrow, or refer to. What in those definitions leads to valuing the protection of users' privacy? The Code of Ethics is a result, then, of years of the collection of individual perspectives on what it means to be a librarian.
For the record, I personally do believe in the ideals set forth in the Code, and I think that they are an excellent set of guidelines for information professionals. But I'm also a person who already believes that censorship, withholding information, and violation of privacy are morally reprehensible in most cases. If faced with a patron who wants to challenge a book or just wants me to pull it from the shelf, I like to think that I would fight against it regardless of the situation. But as we heard in class, not everyone agrees with me there. And it's not as if you have to reject the Code of Ethics entirely in order to think that it's better to judge situations individually. That's a problem with any ethical system; like I said in my last post, it all comes down to intuition.
There's also, like always, the problem of other people. What do you do when you, the perfect champion of intellectual freedom, comes up against someone who doesn't think books about "the homosexual lifestyle" belong in a public library? You can't just hand them the Code of Ethics (what do they care what some fancy organization thinks about it?), and if you're me, you can't tell them what you really think. You can politely tell them about the challenge policy, making it sound as unappealing as possible, and leave it at that, but you're unlikely to appease that patron. I honestly don't know what the answer is, here. Me-me thinks that the library is better off without people like that, but librarian-me wants the library to be as inclusive as possible, even to people I don't particularly like.
Codes of behavior can create some issues, like the ones above. The ways in which they are followed or not followed and the way they interact with other morals and norms can lead to internal and external conflicts. I suppose the best thing to do is to decide if they code you're following solves more problems than it creates.

- K