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Foundation of Library and Information Science

Notes Librarianship is as old as the book itself. However, librarianship started assuming some of the
characteristics of a profession from 1876 onwards. This was the year when American Library
Association was established, the American Library Journals was launched, and the first edition
of the DDC and the C. A. Cutter’s Rules for making a dictionary catalogue were published.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:
9. Librarianship is one such occupational category which is aspiring for this honorific title
which entitles it for higher status, position, income and so on in society.
10. A fairly complex, personalized client professional relationship does not involve a fee.
11. Librarianship in various degrees fulfils some of the other characteristics like intellectual
component, expertise, service orientation, altruistic motivation, self-motivation and
autonomy.
12. The section for employees provided a brief guide to the special skills that library and
information professionals have and how they apply them.

14.4 Professional Ethics in Librarianship

While it is easy to think of ethical values as essential to ensure quality of professional
performance, it is very difficult to design a universally acceptable standard code for professional
ethics. Individual/personal ethics are fundamental to any set of ethical codes which are not
explicitly stated in any professional code, as they are very often assumed to be basic to every
situation. There are also differences in the conception of ethical behaviour in different societies
and cultures. In order to be effective, therefore, professional ethics have to be perceived at
various levels, appropriate to different cultures and situations. These levels may be at the
primary, institutional; professional, national and international levels. Primary levels are a set
of basic guiding principles which are fundamental to human behaviour with reference to any
activity, such as honesty, good conduct, and adherence to truth and so on. At the professional
and organizational levels, there are likely to be occasional conflicts, particularly when a person
has to make a judgement in making a choice for a course of action. For instance, professional
ethics may at times clash with organizational loyalty. Similarly, there may be conflicts between
professional, national and international ethics in performing a particular task. These types of
conflicts appear in any professional activity. Therefore, designing ethical codes becomes not
only too ideal to be realistic but it is also difficult to implement, particularly because, no ethical
code can ever be enforced as they are not statutory laws.
14.4.1 Indian Situation

Indian adventure of designing a professional code of ethics have remained at the level of efforts
to survey literature on professional ethics and no more. The subject of professional ethics has
been dealt with in A K Mukherjee’s book, Librarianship – Its Philosophy and History (1966) and
R L Mittal’s, Library Administration (1964).
Two articles by Meganand in Indian Librarian in 1962 and a literature survey by Amitabh
Chatterji appearing in Iaslic Bulletin in September 1965 are additional literature references.
The only effort to consider this subject seriously in a professional forum appears to be at the
Iaslic Conference in 1984. There were ten papers presented at the Conference five of these give
a good overview of professional ethics, four on professional ethics for persons working in

268 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY