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Unit 14: Library Profession

2. Profession has same meaning employment or trade that everyone has and exercises in Notes
public.
3. Professionalism is earned, rather than being called.

4. Profession is a specialized activity of labour in a society.

14.2 Professional Ethics

A profession is not a profession without a set of basic or fundamental principles or ethics.
Professional Ethics is the science of right conduct and character. Ethical issues are based on
certain moral values which are considered to be good and worthwhile for the well-being of the
society in general. According to Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, “ethics is a science of moral. It
is that branch of philosophy which is concerned with the human character and conduct.”
Webster’s International Dictionary defines Ethics as:

the discipline dealing with what is good and bad or right and wrong with moral duty and
obligation;
a group of moral principles or set of values; a particular theory or system or moral values;
the principles of conduct governing an individual or a profession; standards of behaviour.
the adjective ‘Ethical’ connotes conformity to professionally endorsed principles and
practice or a system/philosophy of conduct and principles practiced by a person or group.
Ethics has been a subject of study and enquiry in philosophy which is as old as human history.
There are three philosophical positions in ethical enquiry in the West, viz. monistic, relativistic
and pluralistic. The monistic position is based on the precept that there is a single and a set of
absolute moral principles or golden rules that can guide correct behaviours in different situations:
The relativistic position is based on the precept – that moral principles are varied and that no
one is any better than any other, therefore they are all mere personal or individual principles.
These two have been rejected as they don’t seem to be tenable in practice. Pluralistic position,
however, is the belief that there are multiple moral principles that can correctly guide behaviour.
This position appears to have emerged as the dominant philosophical position. In Indian
philosophical thought, moral behaviour is closely associated with religious beliefs and practices.
All these ideas; thoughts and theories lead to different aspects of studies of ethics, particularly in
modern societies. Some of these studies relate to personal, organisational, professional; business
ethics which quite often introduce conflicts in practical applications in the real life of an individual.
In this unit, however, we are concerned only with professional ethics, although the other aspects
of ethical values are relevant and are in many ways interconnected.
Professional ethics is considered as an expression of the ethos (i.e. character, spirit, culture,
practice) of an occupation. In other words, it should reflect or be based upon, all the basic values
associated with the occupation. It should reveal what the occupation is, what the practitioners
think of themselves and of their place in society. It should indicate what is distinctive about the
group. The quality of service offered by them should be of a class that makes they distinguished.
Very often; we refer to the quality of a work of a person being highly professional, meaning
thereby that there is a near-perfection in the nature of the performance, the intellectual and/or
technical expertise and their sense of responsibility and commitment to the customers. So
professionals carry, generally, this kind of a reputation, although there may be on occasions
poor performance too. In order to sustain societal recognition and to give their best, almost
every profession, attempts to evolve a code of professional behaviour to guide practitioners.
Interest in ethical behaviour of occupations, often formalized into codes, has a long history.
Although rules of conduct have existed since many centuries; the modern codes had their origin

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