Competency A

Demonstrate awareness of the ethics, values, and foundational principles of one of the information professions, and discuss the importance of those principles within that profession.

Section 1: Introduction

The Society of American Archivists’ Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics (2020) lists abstract virtues like access, sustainability, social responsibility, and diversity, but it also names specific, sometimes competing obligations: to the historical record’s accuracy and completeness, to the people documented within collections, to the users who rely on archives, and to the institutions archivists work for. This document sometimes notes the tensions between these obligations, but doesn’t resolve them. Instead, we as information professionals must use professional codes like this one as a guide to work through specific situations, in which different values may often conflict.

Ferguson et al. (2016) offer a useful definition of what actually makes a situation an ethical dilemma, not just a hard decision: dilemmas are “situations in which there are conflicting ethical obligations, and doing one right thing has the potential to cause harm in another way” (p. 544). Thinking about this definition has changed my views on professional ethics training. Reading a code of ethics may not adequately prepare someone for a specific moment when two of that code’s own principles point in different directions. A professional’s true ethical competence is demonstrated by how they independently reason through such moments.

I encountered this tension firsthand during my internship at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Writing catalog entries based on historical sources, including character descriptions drawn from filmmakers’ original copyright submissions, I often came across outdated and offensive ethnic terminology. In one of our weekly meetings, my supervisor, fellow interns, and I discussed how to handle such cases. Our team treated catalog entries as a form of documentary record, especially significant given that most of the films we were documenting have been lost. My supervisor explained that we were expected to preserve the original language rather than censor or editorialize, but she acknowledged openly that this was uncomfortable. That admission reflects something I think is true of archival ethics generally: following a defensible institutional policy does not eliminate the friction of a difficult decision. Many archives now attach disclaimer language to their online interfaces, noting that materials may contain offensive terms that don’t reflect institutional views. But this is a partial fix at best: users often encounter individual items, records, or finding aids in isolation, without that contextual framing.

Because policy and disclaimers can only go so far, I’ve found that frameworks beyond elaborated ethical codes are useful for thinking through a dilemma once it’s identified. Velasquez et al. (2021) describe several distinct ethical lenses professionals can apply to the same situation, including a utilitarian approach, which weighs a decision’s overall consequences for the greatest number of people affected, and a care ethics approach, which asks decision-makers to “account for the relationships, concerns, and feelings of all stakeholders” (“The Care Ethics Lens” section). These lenses don’t always agree with each other, which is exactly the point: applying more than one framework to the same real situation can reveal considerations a single approach would miss, and often these frameworks cannot be reconciled to yield a single answer.

This competency requires more of information professionals than just familiarity with a code’s contents: we must be able to recognize ethical dilemmas when we encounter them, navigate competing obligations using more than one framework, and make defensible decisions. The evidence that follows reflects five different situations in which I have tried to do exactly that.

References

Section 2: Evidence

My understanding of professional ethics comes from a combination of applied case-study coursework grounded in the SAA Code of Ethics, an institutional ethics case involving competing ethical frameworks, a research ethics discussion post, and a situation from my own internship experience.

My first piece of evidence is a discussion post from INFO 256, responding to a case study about a potential conflict of interest: a curator brought a $7,500 photograph of a faculty member to an acquisitions committee for purchase without disclosing that the photographer was his girlfriend. In my response, I argued that the relationship created a problem regardless of whether it actually influenced the curator’s judgment, since a conflict of interest exists whenever someone occupies two roles with opposing responsibilities, and I grounded this directly in the SAA Code of Ethics’ requirement that archivists “be transparent about their role in the selection, retention, and creation of the historical record by carefully documenting all collections-related policy decisions.” I distinguished between the ethics violation, which belonged to the curator for failing to disclose, and the underlying purchase decision, which I argued could still proceed ethically if handled transparently, for instance, by having the faculty member’s own department purchase and gift the photograph to the archive instead. This artifact shows my ability to apply a specific, named principle from a professional code of ethics to a concrete scenario, and to distinguish between an invididual’s ethical failure and an institution’s ability to resolve the situation ethically.

My second piece of evidence is another discussion post from INFO 256, responding to a case study in which a university president ordered an archivist to destroy a portion of a microfilm collection documenting the university founder’s same-sex relationships, reasoning that “people can find that stuff at the Library of Congress if they want.” In my response, I cited the SAA Code of Ethics’ statement that “archivists should not willfully alter, manipulate, or destroy data or records to conceal facts or distort evidence,” and argued that complying with the president’s request would meet that exact definition, since users accessing the university’s copy would have no way of knowing it had been altered relative to the original held at the Library of Congress. I also grappled with the professional risk involved, since the scenario specified the archivist was an employee-at-will who could be fired for refusing, and proposed a compromise: replacing the excised portion with a note indicating that sensitive material had been withheld but remained available by special request, preserving both the integrity of the record and some form of honest disclosure to users. In this response, I consider a situation where following a code of ethics carries personal professional risk, and to search for a defensible path that upholds the code’s core principle, namely, truthfulness about what the historical record actually contains.

My third piece of evidence is a discussion post from INFO 204, analyzing a case study in which a GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) organization has accepted an invitation to hold its annual conference in a country with anti-LGBT laws, agreeing to exclude LGBTQ+-related conference sessions as a condition of hosting. In my response, I identified the ethical dilemma directly using Ferguson et al.’s (2016) framework: holding the conference had real potential to help regional GLAM organizations and the professionals working within them, particularly women, while simultaneously harming LGBTQ+ GLAM professionals by excluding them from programming and participation that would otherwise be available if the conference was held elsewhere. I argued that the organization’s Board had likely applied a utilitarian lens, weighing the number of people who could benefit against the number who would be harmed. In offering my own recommendation, I applied a different framework, Velasquez et al.’s (2021) care ethics lens, and used it to make a case the Board’s utilitarian calculation had missed: some conference attendees were themselves likely LGBTQ+, and accepting the invitation risked signaling a failure of solidarity with them, even if boycotting entirely would also have costs, including the loss of an opportunity for those same attendees to network with peers. This piece captures my ability to apply more than one ethical framework to an institutional decision, revealing considerations a single-framework approach might not uncover.

My fourth piece of evidence is a discussion post from INFO 285, responding to a case study about a librarian, Jordan, designing a research study involving teenage library patrons. My response addressed informed consent and assent, including the legal requirement in California that minors under 18 cannot independently consent to research participation except in specific circumstances, meaning parental or guardian permission is required alongside a plain-language consent form the teenage participants themselves could also understand and sign. I also addressed data privacy in detail, recommending that identifiable data be de-identified using code numbers, stored separately from consent forms, and destroyed once no longer necessary, and that any reports to library administration use summary statistics and pseudonyms rather than any information specific enough to identify an individual participant. Similarly, on the question of passive observation, I grounded my answer directly in the American Library Association Code of Ethics’ obligation to protect user privacy and confidentiality. I distinguished between genuinely public library spaces where general behavioral observation might be appropriate and more private spaces, like study rooms, where it would not be, and recommended that any recorded observations describe aggregate patterns rather than identifiable individuals. In this piece, I address research ethics involving a vulnerable population, namely minors, with multiple, specific safeguards separately addressing consent, privacy, and observation.

My fifth piece of evidence is a research ethics suggestion I made during volunteer user research work in the Library Technology Integration Lab at San Jose State, related to a form we used to capture pre-screening responses. During a team Zoom meeting, I suggested that our recruitment Google Form link require participants to actively check a box confirming they had read the linked consent form before their response could be submitted. Although our study was not considered high-risk by the institutional review board, and my teammates argued that it was sufficient to link to the form without requiring explicit acknowledgement, I still thought it was important to highlight to prospective participants the nature of our study and their right to withdraw participation at any time.

My suggestion was ultimately implemented, as seen in the attached file which includes both the original and updated versions of the Google Form. The updated form states, “For more information about this study, please review the informed consent form. Your completion of the study indicates your willingness to participate. Do you consent?” The form records the confirmation “By checking this box, I have read the informed consent notice and agree to participate in this study” for every completed response; if a participant did not check the box, their response was not recorded at all. This artifact demonstrates a real-world application of informed consent principles: instead of treating informed consent as a formality assumed by a participant’s volunteering for the study, I pushed for a specific, verifiable mechanism ensuring that consent was actively given and documented before any data collection occurred.

Section 3: Conclusion

These five pieces span different areas of professional ethics: a conflict of interest requiring transparency, a censorship request carrying professional risk, an institutional decision weighed through two competing ethical frameworks, layered research protections for a vulnerable population, and a mechanism I pushed to have built into a study. Three of these were genuine dilemmas, situations where a defensible case existed on more than one side. The fourth and fifth were more straightforward, but no less real, showing that not every ethical judgment call in practice is ambiguous; sometimes it’s important to just do the work to ensure ethical principles are fully and correctly applied. In my future career, I intend to keep treating a code of ethics as a starting point for deliberation, while staying alert to my own personal moral compass and the signals of discomfort it gives me. To stay informed in this area, I plan to follow the Society of American Archivists’ continuing education offerings related to ethical and legal responsibilities, and to consult the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics’ resources on professional decision-making frameworks, since both are directly focused on applied ethical reasoning.