Transparency - a relevant ethical value for librarians? Articles uri icon

publication date

  • September 2021

start page

  • 42

end page

  • 59

issue

  • 2

volume

  • 30

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1061-9321

abstract

  • Transparency, one of the features of institutional, business and all manner of (especially public) organizational activities, consists in allowing citizens access to information on in-house governance. As employees of public institutions, librarians should include that value in their codes of ethics and furnish users and society at large with information on their activities. This article investigates the presence of transparency in librarians codes of ethics. Of the 60 codes analyzed, only seven were found to contain such a reference, where it is interpreted to have a dual role or dimension: in providing access to the information generated by libraries themselves and as a vehicle for accessing other institutions information. The near absence of allusions to transparency in codes of ethics is an indication that it is not deemed by the profession to constitute an ethical value of any significance, in light of which the present findings serve as grounds for recommending that codes should be updated to include it.

subjects

  • Library Science and Documentation