Professional Interview

I had an interesting discussion with my interviewee just as I had many interesting discussions for this assignment. I learned that there are many more ethical situations and even ethical grey areas in the library profession than I would have thought. In discussing this assignment with various coworkers and professional friends of mine, I discovered that many professional librarians have different stances on the same ideas and that each person’s personal ethics influence the decisions they make as librarians.

For example, my interviewee is an absolutist on censorship. There is never a time or a place for censorship in any form. Other professional friends think that censorship in certain places, like school libraries, is more acceptable.

One of the most interesting responses I got was to the question, “Can you think of a situation when the only possible response is a potentially unethical one?” Many people could not. My interviewee said: “Person A is kidnapped by person B. The only person who saw and can identify person B is a library staff member, who can access name and address or pull up surveillance video, and potentially save person A's life.  Ethically, the strict responsibility is to protect patron B's information, but it would be awfully hard to live with yourself if you did not share information and then person A was killed or raped by person B.”

We had a lengthy discussion about the homeless population in the library, what the library’s responsibility is to this population, and how the library should handle rising pressure from members of the community to remove homeless people from the building. The overwhelming response, from both my interviewee and my professional friends it that the library must serve the homeless as they serve all patrons and provide them with the information and services that they need regardless of their individual circumstances.

Finally, the most interesting thing about my interview, I feel, was the answer to the question about advice for new an young librarians. The answer was, “Know yourself. Get to know the rationale behind your ethics before they are challenged.” I think that there is much wisdom in this statement. You have to know who you are and why you think the way that you do before you can justify yourself to others and when you are discussing ethical dilemmas you need to justify your decisions, especially to yourself.