Values and Professional Career
Essay by people • July 4, 2011 • Essay • 344 Words (2 Pages) • 2,072 Views
"Human beings have grappled with issues of right and wrong, morality and law,
and ethics and duty ever since human beings began to engage in abstract thinking"
(Lester 2003, 225). This struggle is due to multiple and sometimes conflicting inputs to
our lives and the relationship between these inputs. These can be our religion, our family,
society and the law. Each person must sort through these inputs and determine what is
important to them as an individual. This, then, becomes the basis of our professional
values (Winston 2005, 235).Privacy can be defined as "the
claim of individuals, groups or institutions to determine for themselves when, how and to
what extent information about themselves is communicated to others" (Cate 1997, 22)."Integrity includes
but goes beyond honesty. Honesty is telling the truth - in other words, conforming our
words to reality. Integrity is conforming reality to our words - in other words, keeping
promises" (Scarnati 1997, 25).Professional values are often supported by ethical principles and the code of
ethics of professional associations (Winston 2005). The American Library Association
(ALA) has developed their Code of Ethics with an introduction that states, "The
principles of this Code are expressed in broad statements to guide ethical decision
making. These statements provide a framework; they cannot and do not dictate conduct to
cover particular situations" (ala.org). With this statement, I believe my professional
values are in line with and supported by the ALA Code of Ethics. My most important
professional values, as defined above, fall in line with the first three and the last item of
the ALA Code of Ethics:
I. We provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully
organized resources; equitable service policies; equitable access; and accurate, unbiased,
and courteous responses to all requests.
II. We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library
resources.
III.
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