Pnina Shachaf, SLIS faculty member, recently published "A Global Perspective on Library Association Code of Ethics" in Library & Information Science Research, Volume 27, Issue 4, Autumn 2005, pages 513-533.
The article is available through Elsevier's Science Direct website.
Abstract:
This study reports an analysis of library association codes of ethics from 28 countries around the globe. A comparative content analysis of the English versions of codes of ethics proposed by professional associations yielded a typology of issues. Twenty categories of issues were identified and the extent of guidance contained in the categories of code content was identified for each category. The most frequent issues in these codes of ethics were professional development, integrity, confidentiality and privacy, and free and equal access to information. While confidentiality and privacy and equal access to information appear in all existing typologies of library and information science ethics, other issues, such as copyright and intellectual property and democracy and responsibility toward society, which appear in almost all other typologies, were evident in less than half of the codes in this study.
- Table 1 of the article lists the 28 countries whose library association codes of ethics were studied. The list includes: Armenia, Australia, Canada, Croatia, Estonia, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, United Kingdom, Ukraine, United States.
- Figure 3, page 12 of the article addresses "Content Categories" of the codes. "The most frequent content categories, which appeared in at least half of the codes, were professional development (89%), integrity (89%), confidentiality and privacy (85%), free and equal access to information (82%), conflict of interest and personal gain (71%), responsibilities toward the profession (67%), responsibilities toward colleagues (64%), censorship (64%), collection development (53%), competency (50%), high level of service (50%), and responsibilities toward the user (50%)."
Posted December 06, 2005