The Australian Library Journal

IFLA and professional ethics

Alex Byrne

Some thoughtful individuals have recognised a need to go beyond the traditional ethical concerns of professions. This paper explores some of the ethical dimensions of modern librarianship by considering the establishment of the Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) initiative by IFLA. It acknowledges that the extension of traditionally accepted professional boundaries will have significant consequences for the profession.

The high regard in which Australian librarianship is held internationally owes much to the work of such leaders as Margaret Trask. Her profound influence on libraries and librarianship through her teaching, consultancy and advice contributed to the development of a profession which is admired for its technical proficiency and sound foundation on principles. It is a client-centred profession which places significant ethical expectations on its members. Those expectations underpin commitments to service to individual clients and to communities and frame practice. However, until recently, they have tended to be seen in accepted professional ethical frameworks and largely in organisationally based terms. Both IFLA and ALIA have now extended the boundaries so as to embrace wider societal considerations including the fundamental human right to know. This process has extended the traditionally accepted boundaries of professional expectations of librarians both locally and internationally.

IFLA and professionalism

The development and promotion of librarianship as a profession has been a key issue for IFLA since its inception in 1927. As a federation of professional associations, it has been concerned to advance both the practice and the standing of the profession. It has built upon the work of the stronger and older national associations and inspired the newer to promote the highest standards of professional services. It has worked to establish librarianship as an internationally recognised profession, seeking to enhance its status throughout the world and especially in the eyes of governments and key international organisations such as UNESCO.

This process can be traced through the successive professional statements issued since the landmark IFLA/UNESCO Public Library Manifesto (IFLA and UNESCO 1994 [1949]) and in the programs to advance professional practice in such areas as universal bibliographical control and the preservation of print and digital materials. International co-operation has been based on a shared conception of librarianship as a profession which applies the methods of library and information science within a broadly agreed professional framework. While there are of course major differences in the resources available to librarians in rich and poor countries and in the methods employed in different library traditions, the degree of commonality in professional outlook is remarkable. It is evident both to the casual participant at international conferences and in the shared importance placed on such issues as preservation. This is not to deny the major differences in outlook between many professional colleagues especially those in the developing countries of the 'South' versus those in the rich 'North' or, during the Cold War, those in the 'West' versus those in the 'Communist bloc' (Volodin 2000). It is, however, to affirm that there is an identifiable metier of librarianship with certain shared practices and dispositions.

Positioning professions

This last statement might appear to be stating the obvious but it expresses a vital issue for professions, the definitional question of establishing each profession's boundaries, of identifying what is in and what is out. IFLA's traditional focus on technical concerns has reflected the wish of librarians to be accepted as professionals by constructing their own distinctive body of specialised knowledge and skill, identifying their areas of service to society, and accepting self-discipline as represented most explicitly by codes of ethics. Professional self-discipline is important to the positioning of professions generally as servants of society by expressing a spirit of disinterestedness. The expectations expressed in codes of ethics and which are to be imposed on the members of professions exert at least moral force over the members, binding them to do good, or at least avoid doing harm, in their practice. According to the Australian Council of Professions, the core emphases in codes of ethics for the professions are on knowledge, honesty, integrity and fairness, together with concern for the general community as well as particular employers and clients (Australian Council of Professions 1990). Professionals are expected to practice only within their areas of competence and to continue to extend and maintain their competence throughout their professional lives.

Those expectations have been extended in consequence of the principles articulated in the Nuremberg trials after World War II to demand that each professional should contemplate the effects of his or her actions on both the client and the community. Conflicting imperatives, particularly the expectation to serve the client versus the expectation to serve the community, must be resolved against an ethical framework in which disinterested practice is essential and the general good is given considerable emphasis. Nuremberg conclusively articulated personal responsibility: actions can neither be excused as 'just following orders' nor as 'accepted practice'. Ethical practice 'requires commitment, reflection, and perseverance ... a body of moral knowledge and a facility in moral reasoning' (Day 1999, p412 - author's emphasis). The professional must beware of self-deception by cultivating 'openness of mind, existential vigilance and skeptical sensibility' (Cooper 2001).

Community scepticism about the professions and individual professionals has increased as part of the 'consumer revolution' of the late twentieth century and widespread views in the community that professionals tend to be self-serving in preference to serving the public and the community (McDowell 1991). There are growing demands that professionals should be more responsible and more accountable to their clients and to the public in general than they have been in the past. This may be a consequence of the significant increase in the numbers of professions and professionals and their increasingly central importance to the operation of society (Bayles 1989, p4). It may also be attributed to their increased and supranational agency which has emerged through globalism (Engel and Engel 1990).

Ethical concerns in librarianship have emphasised duty to the client, societal responsibility, impartiality and accuracy. More general expectations include responsibilities to: respect the autonomy and moral worth of all human beings; promote social harmony, justice and fairness; minimise harm; and justify organisational, professional, public and cultural trust (Froehlich 1997, pp24-25). While these concerns reflect an ontological commitment to the enhancement of human well-being, they also underlie traditional professional concerns including, especially, the long-held commitment to preserve the record of knowledge. Library associations have tried to guide and assist both institutions and individual librarians by preparing ethical statements which require librarians to provide the best possible access to information which will meet the needs of users and resist censorship (Vaagan 2002).

When discussing professional ethics, library commentators have tended to focus on procedurally and technologically related issues with limited attention to political and ideological factors. Corrall and Brewerton, for example, discuss ethics in relation to the development of professional competence. They do not mention issues of intellectual freedom and censorship except for passing references to the 'tensions between freedom of information and personal privacy (and protection from offensive material)' and to conflict of interest in the acquisition of library resources. In the latter instance they cite a case which concerned the controversial outsourcing of materials selection to Baker & Taylor by the Hawaii State Public Library System in 1996, a measure that assigned to a commercial company decisions on the expenditure of public funds (Corrall and Brewerton 1999). Neglect of such ethical dilemmas in a professional guide is curious but appears to reflect a widespread view that they are few and far between.

This view can be challenged by considering the experience of the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) which is uniquely notable among professional bodies in the library and information fields for the five decades during which it has vigorously prosecuted First Amendment rights in the United States. Over that period the OIF, by demonstrating how frequent the demands for censorship imposed by pressure groups are, has highlighted the importance of a principled stand in response to such pressures (ALA. Office for Intellectual Freedom 2002).

ALIA

The need to go beyond the traditional ethical concerns of professions indicated by the Australian Council of Professions, mentioned above, and to refocus ethics in librarianship has led the Australian Library and Information Association to espouse seven key values (ALIA 2002):

1. Promotion of the free flow of information and ideas through open access to recorded knowledge, information, and creative works.
2. Connection of people to ideas.
3. Commitment to literacy, information literacy and learning.
4. Respect for the diversity and individuality of all people.
5. Preservation of the human record.
6. Excellence in professional service to our communities.
7. Partnerships to advance these values.

These values give moral force to the Association's constitution, particularly the first object, 'To promote the free flow of information and ideas in the interests of all Australians and a thriving culture and democracy', and the third object, 'To ensure the high standard of personnel engaged in information provision and foster their professional interests and aspirations' (ALIA 2000). Such values set a high benchmark for professional conduct of 'members of a profession committed to intellectual freedom and the free flow of ideas and information' (ALIA 2001). They emphasise the idea that the Association's professional commitment to free access to information goes to the heart of societies which aim to provide the widest opportunities for their peoples. Although far from universal, such commitments are widely shared by librarians and their associations.

IFLA's FAIFE initiative

At the international level, these broader expectations of librarianship were exercised by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in 1997 when its Council took the bold step of establishing the Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE). With that decision, IFLA decided that it had a responsibility to advocate and defend intellectual freedom in regard to libraries and information services and those who work in them. It affirmed the centrality to the profession of librarianship of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations 1948):

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression ... to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

With this decision, the global body for library and information services identified an ethical core for the profession which is based on a right which has been formally endorsed by almost all states. The strong support for the 1997 resolution to establish the Committee and for subsequent FAIFE reports and initiatives indicated that the time had come for IFLA to explicitly commit itself to this core value. Such a commitment had, however, been foreshadowed long before, in 1978, when the president of the American Library Association, Russell Shank, presented an IFLA Council resolution that recommended that IFLA should consider supporting the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accord1 and urged 'appropriate action with regard to states ... which abridge human rights, and particularly the rights of free expression, of free access to information, and of the free flow of publications among nations' (IFLA 1978, p60). The tension and distrust experienced during the Cold War had a chilling effect on such initiatives so it was not until 1995 that such concerns began to be addressed, despite statements of principle by a number of IFLA presidents.

Before then, IFLA focussed on professional matters of a technical nature considering, in the words of president Sir Frank Francis that 'its power stems from its ability to facilitate and organise fruitful discussion of subjects of current interest in the world of librarianship' (Welch 1969, p428). This placed questions of human rights among the 'questions that one does not ask and that one cannot ask' (Bourdieu 1987, p18) and defined the boundaries of professionalism in technical terms. In adopting this position, IFLA was acting in the same manner as other professional bodies. It effectively ignored early calls to address human rights issues while clinging to a professional orthodoxy related to technical matters. Eventually, however, following the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the consequential end of the Cold War, it was cajoled into action.

The first decision, taken in 1995, was to establish an ad hoc investigatory committee to advise IFLA on what role, if any, it might play in addressing the constraints on the right to have access to information. The committee's report presented to the 1997 Council meeting in Copenhagen led to a resolution that IFLA should:

...establish a Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression that will advise IFLA on matters of international significance to libraries and librarianship in this area, including, but not limited to:

• Censorship of library materials.
• Ideological, economic, political or religious pressures resulting in limitations on access to information in libraries, or restrictions on librarians and other information specialists who provide reference and other information services (IFLA Executive Board 1997).

The resolution was strongly supported. Not only did the Scandinavian, North American, French, UK and other 'Western' voting delegates support it, as might have been expected, but so did the representatives of other countries. In accepting the resolution, IFLA extended the boundaries of library and information service by explicitly encompassing a commitment to intellectual freedom and calling on members of the profession to advance it. The strength of the vote demonstrated that the time for focus on intellectual freedom had come.

In librarianship, there have been examples of activism by individual professionals and professional associations such as the part played by some in the civil rights movement in the United States (Graham 2001), the work of the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom and other initiatives in ALA. However, in general library professional associations have been reluctant to endorse overtly action on wider social issues on behalf of the profession. By establishing its FAIFE initiative, IFLA thus took a most significant step in which it echoed the commitment of the ALA in its Office of Intellectual Freedom to broadening its explicit concerns as an international professional body to include intellectual freedom and human rights. It introduced the dimension of social actor to the previous dimensions of the profession which emphasised technical expertise, authority, disinterestedness and social responsibility.

Through taking a stand on such issues as the 'independent libraries' in Cuba, FAIFE supported the principle of freedom of access to information even though it brought IFLA into conflict with one of its valued member associations, ASCUBI, which considered the 'independent libraries' to be nothing more than fronts for dissident activities (Byrne 2001). The long-running case demonstrated that individual librarians would support the principle of freedom of access to information even when it brought them into conflict with highly regarded professional colleagues and their association. The campaign for the release of Song Yongyi, a US-based librarian who had been arrested for collecting old newspapers in China (Byrne 2000), particularised the new professional concerns in the defence of fellow practitioners - a novel area for IFLA.

Under its charter, FAIFE has worked to emphasise the importance of professional ethics and to encourage its member associations to establish such codes or strengthen them, particularly through greater emphasis on intellectual freedom. To that end, IFLA/FAIFE has collected codes for inclusion on its website and has collaborated in a number of projects including the compilation of an international survey of ethics for library and information services (Vaagan 2002). As always, the codes of the national associations of Northern Europe and North America are strongly represented. However, a number of other associations, including several from post-Communist Eastern Europe, have introduced or substantially revised codes of ethics and have taken steps to give them force.

By promulgating statements of principle such as the Glasgow Declaration on Libraries, Information Services and Intellectual Freedom (IFLA 2002) and publishing codes of ethics, IFLA and its constituent associations have begun to place high expectations on both practitioners and institutions. The Glasgow Declaration posits a fundamental relationship between intellectual freedom and library and information services, suggesting that intellectual freedom is supported by good library and information services and that the services cannot reach their potential without a commitment to intellectual freedom.

These statements and codes constitute calls to order that can create dilemmas for libraries and the librarians who work in them. For example, as one would expect, the strongly internalised precepts of librarians to provide access to information without bias and hence to support freedom of expression can lead to conflict when set against censorship regimes, be they legal or extra-legal, restrictive or relatively benign. There can also be conflict between those precepts and the librarians' professional commitment to serving their clients or their own personal moral values. As law-abiding citizens, and because they are generally employed by some public authority, librarians can be expected to exhibit strong respect for the law. Censorship may make them uncomfortable but they are unlikely to oppose its application publicly unless strongly supported. This conformity with authority can present challenges to library associations which decide to advocate ethical positions based on the concept of a universal right.

If the statements about intellectual freedom and the codes of ethics that often contain them are to be more than just pious expressions, if they are to be adopted into consistent professional dispositions which inform practice, then the professional bodies which promulgate them need to be able to show how the principles can be applied in practice. They also need to support their members when their members seek to apply the principles. Even in the United States, where ALA has championed intellectual freedom for so long, its defence will in the future require even greater commitment while the threats to it continue and even increase, as has been illustrated over the last two years since the enactment of the US PATRIOT Act (United States of America. Congress 2001).

The broader ethical agenda adopted by IFLA through its FAIFE initiative has achieved wide support within IFLA circles over its first six years. FAIFE's statements, translation and adoption of them by national library associations in revised codes of ethics are mapping out a professional disposition which explicitly derives its justification from a fundamental human right, the right to know. FAIFE's actions, activities by associations, and an increasing number of publications have begun to explore the implications of this extended disposition for practitioners and the services in which they are employed. It is too early to judge the long term effects of the initiative on the profession but, at least in IFLA circles, its moral authority has been welcomed.

Adoption of the FAIFE initiative and similar measures such as ALIA's new constitution represents a process of professional renewal. It builds on the core concepts and strengths of the profession but lends them new force by grounding them in a fundamental human right. This is likely to have far reaching consequences in strengthening the profession's foundation and redefining its ethics, and hence its practice. It thus continues the work of librarianship's leaders and teachers, including Margaret Trask, in developing a profession which is principled, proficient and relevant to the communities its members serve.

References

ALA. Office for Intellectual Freedom 2002 Intellectual Freedom Manual, 6th edition, Chicago, ALA.

ALIA 2000 Constitution of the Australian Library and Information Association Limited, Canberra, Australian Library and Information Association. .

ALIA 2001 Statement on professional conduct, Canberra, Australian Library and Information Association.

ALIA 2002, ALIA core values statement, Australian Library and Information Association.

Australian Council of Professions 1990, Policy on ethics of professionals.

Bayles, MD 1989 Professional ethics, 2nd edn, Belmont, Wadsworth.

Bourdieu, P 1987 Choses dites, Paris, Editions de Minuit.

Byrne, A 2000, 'The story of Yongyi: intellectual freedom and academic libraries'. Inaugural public lecture at the Markets Forum, University Library, University of Technology, Sydney, 7 September 2000.

Byrne, A 2001, 'A plea for free speech in Boston: report to IFLA Council on FAIFE', August 2001, Boston, IFLA/FAIFE.

Cooper, R 2001, 'Saving Masud Khan [letter]', London Review of Books vol 23 [7], p4.

Corrall, S and Brewerton, A 1999 The new professional's handbook: your guide to information services management, London, Library Association Publishing.

Day, LA 1999 Ethics in media communications: cases and controversies, 3rd edn, Belmont, Wadsworth.

Engel, JR and Engel, JG 1990 Ethics of environment and development: global challenge, international response, London, Belhaven.

Froehlich, TJ 1997 Survey and analysis of the major ethical and legal issues facing library and information services, IFLA Publications 78, München, Saur.

Graham, PT 2001, 'Public librarians and the civil rights movement: Alabama 1955-1965', Library Quarterly. 71 [1], pp1-27.

IFLA 1978, Proceedings of the 44th Council Meeting, trbské Pleso, Universal Availability of Publications, München, Saur.

IFLA 2002, The Glasgow Declaration on Libraries, Information Services and Intellectual Freedom, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.

IFLA and UNESCO 1994 (1949), Public Library Manifesto, The Hague, IFLA. .

IFLA Executive Board 1997, 'Council resolution', Copenhagen, IFLA.

McDowell, B 1991 Ethical conduct and the professional's dilemma: choosing between service and success, New York, Quorum.

United Nations 1948, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

United States of America. Congress 2001 PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act.

Vaagan, RW ed 2002, The ethics of librarianship: an international survey, IFLA Publications 101, München, Saur.

Volodin, BF 2000, 'History of librarianship, library history, or information history: a view from Russia', Library Quarterly 70 [4], pp446-467.

Welch, EH 1969, 'IFLA's international importance', Wilson Library Bulletin 43, pp428-431.

End note

1 The Helsinki Accord was the outcome of a 1975 meeting of thirty-five countries, including the USA and USSR, on co-operation in security, economic development, science, technology and human rights.

Biographical information

Alex Byrne is the president-elect 2003-2005 of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA http://www.ifla.org), will be president 2005-2007 and previously chaired IFLA's Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression. His day job is as university librarian and a deputy chair of the Academic Board at the University of Technology, Sydney.