Professional Values

As stated in my career plan, my ultimate goal as an information professional is to be the Head of User Services at an academic or public library. While this is my intended position and title, it is equally important to think of my plan in terms of which values I would like to promote through my work, and what changes I would like to effect. Through the ÉSIS program, I was able to learn a lot about the ethical dilemmas that information professionals face, such as the need to maintain neutrality, create accessible and diverse collections, and pursue decolonization in their insitutions. The following are specific ethical values I strive to embody — both because they align with the work I have done, and because they are critical to user services.

Information sovereignty is also an essential value to me, which I discuss in greater detail. It is an absoultely crucial part of how information professionals can uphold or undermine Indigenous sovereignty in Canada. Click to read more about this issue!

Potentially the most prominent ethical aspect of user services is the issue of how services can be provided in a way that is accessible to all patrons, regardless of ways in which they may be marginalized. Ensuring that I do my part to advance this cause is a core part of my values. Marginalization, as relevant to library service provision, is especially important when due to racialization, homelessness, or disability – all of which can prevent individuals from comfortably using the library space. How libraries formulate and change institutional behaviours which affect these individuals (e.g. rules against body odor and luggage, unilingual and/or non-diverse staff) is critical to ensuring that libraries’ common rhetoric around accessibility is a reality experienced by patrons. Engaging with this dimension of librarianship involves gathering information from users about their needs and demographics, and communicating this information among staff. I am a firm believer that ensuring accessibility and diversity in service and collections is how libraries demonstrate that they are truly committed to the egalitarian and democratic ideals which they espouse. Access, equity, and public good are all stated core values of the American Library Association, but require active work and a constant interrogation of policies to be meaningful.

In my time in the ÉSIS program, I wrote an article research note which I am in the process of publishing, and which typifies my concerns regarding the ethical complexities of diversity and accessibility in library services. My in-progress publication is entitled “Access versus Assimilation in the Multilingual Collections of Canadian Public Libraries” and provides an overview on how multilingual collections have been used to facilitate integration and multiculturalism, and conversely to promote Anglicization (and Francisation) of immigrant communities. I believe this issue represents the duality of accessibility, where policies which may seem intuitively beneficial to marginalized patrons may also reflect the interests of powerful institutions, and which may actually be to their detriment. My academic background in political science and history draws me to these kinds of ethical issues which reflect Canadian historical experiences, and I believe that dissecting these issues further is both a personal goal and a necessity for Canadian librarians.

A core part of the bigger-picture vision for my career as a librarian is to help guide libraries’ institutional culture. My professional values as a librarian are rooted in the promotion of libraries in public institutions (including universities) as places in which equity is seen not as a means of complying with general workplace/educational expectations, but as a core aspect of information provision, as fundamental to the work of librarians as making information easily accessible. Equity, in this sense, means the fair treatment of information coming from different communities, respect for the complexity of decolonization in collections, and ensuring that patrons from all demographic groups feel they can equally expect respectful service. I believe this is the duty of desk assistants as much as collections development and public service librarians. I believe that being a bulwark of commitment to equality and cultural pluralism in a time of social turmoil is part of how libraries’ can remain relevant, as alternative sources of information increasingly impose themselves over traditional media and drive radicalization.

Librarianship as a profession often prides itself on being trusted by and available to the entire public, and on providing information regardless of the partisan identities of users. Nonetheless, the rise of global populism has been accompanied with increasing suspicion levelled at academic and public librarians. This may be in part because of the association between libraries and children (an important user demographic). As such, concerns over a diminishing ability of parents to regulate the information their children access, which can shape their moral and political views, may be transformed into skepticism or outright hostility towards librarians. Balancing the need to allay these concerns without compromising on commitments to diversity and accuracy in collections development is one of the defining challenges of the librarian profession in the 21st century.