Core Competency A

A. articulate the ethics, values and foundational principles of library and information professionals and their role in the promotion of intellectual freedom. B. understandng, experience, application, and evidence.

In both my classwork and my work creating a library for Robinson Rancheria Education Center, I have exercised the core values and code of ethics of the American Library Association. Being a librarian in a public library demands that we understand and adhere to the core values and the Code of Ethics of the profession. Values, as delineated by the American Library Association’s “Library Bill of Rights,” include providing materials that address all points of view on both current and historical matters, challenging attempts at censorship, and providing free and equal access to all persons regardless of their ethnicity, age, viewpoints or background. Sometimes the viewpoint of the materials that we provide is anathematic to our own values, and it is essential that we be able to separate our private feelings and beliefs from our professional duties. The ALA’s “Code of Ethics” states that library professionals should provide excellent service, promote intellectual freedom, protect our members’ privacy, respect intellectual property, act respectfully with both coworkers and library members, continue to both expand our own knowledge and encourage our coworkers to expand theirs, and to separate our personal beliefs and convictions from our professional duties. Providing excellent service means doing everything in our power to satisfy our members’ needs, whether by finding an online answer to their question or by training volunteers to teach how to use our online catalog. One exercise in LIBR 262 demonstrated the necessity of separating our convictions from our library duties: we were asked to list the five subjects that we would have the most difficulty being neutral about when making library selections and to note that we had to be particularly diligent that we not let our prejudices inhibit our selection process. Think about the collection development paper with a challenge policy for Intellectual Freedom/ Issues in Youth Book Challenges in the US A Rural Public Library System and Ranganathan’s Five Laws Code of Ethics of the American Library Association (2009). American Library Association. Accessed on November 10, 2009, from http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/statementspols/codeofethics/codeethics.cfm

Library bill of rights (2009). American Library Association. Accessed on November 10, 2009, from http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/statementspols/statementsif/librarybillrights.cfm ALA’s core competencies of librarianship (2009). American Library Association. Accessed on November 10, 2009, from http://www.ala.org/ala/educationcareers/careers/corecomp/corecompetences/finalcorecompstat09 .pdf