A Handbook of Ethical Practice: A Practical Guide to Dealing with Ethical Issues in Information and Library Work

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "A Handbook of Ethical Practice: A Practical Guide to Dealing with Ethical Issues in Information and Library Work", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 4, pp. 339-341. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710743598

One of the things these authors say is that professional codes of ethics are often good on principles but less good on practice. This is, of course, where the principles and claims, assertions and general moral statements that we associate with ethics challenge practitioners and professionals to make choices and deal with dilemmas. Such choices and dilemmas often take the form of good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair, but often, far more subtly, are choices between options that are good or right or fair in different ways in different contexts. This is what makes ethics – “doing the right thing” – so difficult – easy to say but difficult to do.

There are many other problems that cluster around ethics: its interface with applicable law, say on issues of privacy, its social and cultural assumptions (above all in a relativistic and international world), its links with personal as well as organizational beliefs and values, and whether what might be seen as fair by one group at one time can possibly be seen as fair by another in another. Up to now the literature in information ethics has been patchy and, above all, thin on practice‐based approaches, and now this sensible, shrewd, convincing book guides the reader through the subject clearly.

There are two most likely constituencies for it – students and lecturers studying information ethics at college and university, and practitioners going through informal or formal programmes of continuing professional development. And, going by twos, there are two real strengths in this book – first of all the convincing structure and focus to content and argument, and second the case studies with their associated discussion. The structure and focus are well‐trimmed‐down to essentials – why and how ethics in information, why and what about ethical codes (similarities and differences), applications in four areas of work (information services and supply, intellectual property, access and privacy, and management).

Each one has a chapter with case‐studies and discussion – very clear, easy to use for students and trainers. They are plausible short narratives of dilemmas for library managers – the parent wanting to know if you have provided information about contraception to her daughter, donations from creationists, snooping on students using the network, incorrectly interpreting a software licence, and more. Four options for each one are provided and encourage intelligent debate. Trainers can readily enhance these with their own material. It will be interesting to see whether Chandos (the authors hold the copyright, judging from copyright notice on the back of the title‐page) get requests for copyright‐clearance to use the case‐studies as is. Something that should have been made clear. The authors (all lecturers at the University of Strathclyde) know what questions to raise and how to point in the direction of choices – they do not give “solutions” or “answers” though at times it is clear what they think.

A challenge in dealing with information ethics is where to set the boundaries. Understandably, as here, ethics overlaps with law – with the law on intellectual property rights and balances between ownership and access, for instance, and with the law on privacy and confidentiality and liability. Equity issues take us into politically charged fields like disability and access issues take us even further – intellectual freedom and democracy. Even fairly neutral things, like the space devoted by Dewey to Christianity, present ethical posers, let alone fair and honest procurement, monitoring online downloads, and setting interpretations of ethical codes into a cultural or even religious context. The authors are alert to relevant law and weave it into the book where required – after all “fair dealing/use” uses the term “fair” and demonstrates, along with much else here, how law and ethics inter‐penetrate. Predictably, many of the legal examples cited come from the USA (though ethically they open up global issues).

The case studies are not the only place where ethical choices and dilemmas emerge – they emerge throughout the text in many forms: not purchasing controversial materials even if they have literary merit, vetting inaccurate wikis, dealing with odd‐ball (let alone extremist) websites, and whether to accept a sponsored gift from the intelligent design lobby. Times change and may make The Satanic Verses or controversial cartoons of Muhammad mere history. To do them justice, the authors do not retreat into history often, something good in a book that really must – if it is to be credible now – deal with now.

Many of these are issues of censorship, something the authors are alert to; above all because for them information specialists are intermediaries with duties and responsibilities not just to be “professional” but ultimately to safeguard freedom of speech. There are also managerial implications for ethics – personally and professionally and for the organization. This takes us into familiar territory – human resource management, ethically managing change, and dealing with content and services ethically.

So this is a clear practical book about clear practical things. Now and again it does not quite know whether it is talking about ethics or law, ethics or censorship, or ethics and CPD, it sermonizes about professional development, and rather loses me in talking about the ethics of change. It should also have factored obligation and liability in far more because that, if anywhere, is where many of the current dilemmas occur – above all for personal consequences. You can be as ethical as you like in a legalistic age but it is not much help if you can defend yourself only ethically. Dilemmas can easily become spaghetti westerns, too, with good guys – the ethical librarians – and the bad guys – the political wonks in the USA who insist on the Patriot Act.

It is good to see the authors not only rehearsing a selection of professional codes but starting to analyze them comparatively and suggest that they are (a) not as anodyne as they look and (b) not as transferable socially and professionally as they seem. This critical analysis is long overdue, because it is tiresome to many professionals to get codes of ethics as they are “a good thing” and self‐evidently good like motherhood and apple pie. Adding to that is the thought that ethics kick in immediately, in practice, and, no matter how much framework of law there is, it is always remote, takes a long time to work, and is expensive. There are times when personal and organizational interpretations differ – another area much under‐researched (and rightly raised in this book as worth more attention).

This is a timely and highly attractive book, with an excellent bibliography (another real plus to add to the clear structure and sound case‐studies). There is a hardback (at £57.00) recommended to any library anticipating heavy use. It really is a practical guide (a phrase in a book title always likely to provoke scepticism), and readers can rely on it doing “what it says on the tin”. For once, in a field where there really is a lot of waffle, good‐natured but earnest, and sometime pious too. There will be some readers, almost certainly, who will have wanted a much more dogmatic tone. I can think of studies of, say, Muslim and Judaic ethics in fields like medicine which do this.

And something not even authors as sure‐footed as McMenemy, Poulter and Burton can be expected to do, and that is to attack that ethical relativism that argues that “it all depends on who and what you are”. Ethical case‐studies and codes of ethics, and ultimately the practical experience of being an information professional, come back time and time again to the underlying dilemma of whether it all really matters and if so why.

In nailing their colours to the mast about professional standards and the ever‐increasing challenge to professionals in the modern world – are they needed, why do they matter, are they even to be counted among the guardians of democracy – they offer a plain meta‐ethics that deserves attention by readers in its own right.