Facilitating ethical enactment: a survey of the communication of core values in alabama public library online policy statements
John T. F. Burgess, Juliana Mestre · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 2021
Professional ethics are often presented in the LIS classroom as satisfying normative and constitutive goals. This paper argues for considering how professional ethics can build trust relationships between public libraries and patrons, using the enactivist model of cognition, and the intersubjective ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. These explain how communicating professional ethics may help inform the sense making processes of patrons experiencing affective vulnerability as they determine whether to trust the library. A quantitative stratified sampling of thirty public libraries in Alabama revealed that libraries serving smaller, more rural communities were less likely to share professional values on their web sites. Values such as intellectual freedom, diversity, and sustainability were particularly underrepresented. This paper concludes with a recommendation to emphasize values communication, particularly in the construction of policies, when teaching professional ethics. These communications will aid those experiencing affective vulnerability, such as during a pandemic, in making informed trust decisions.