Outcome 1: Foundations of the Profession

"Articulate a philosophy of ethical and client-centered information services for the library and information professions."

My first semester in the Emporia State University School of Library and Information Management, I was enrolled in LI801XS: Foundations of Library and Information Science. This course provided a detailed history of librarianship as a profession, as well as an overview of basic foundations of information science. The Foundations of Library and Information Science course also delved into the American Library Association’s Code of Ethics and promoted healthy discussions surrounding the ideas presented by the ALA on a variety of topics.

In this particular course, our groups were assigned a specific case study–in our case number 2.15– and then were required to create a presentation that walked through the process of solving the ethical issue. The presentation was given as a “group” during a face-to-face class, and feedback was elicited regarding the overall presentation and the breakdown of the problem solving process.

Our particular case study involved intellectual freedom, specifically access to government documents being held in a repository:

The university library was a government repository library and, as such, remained open to the public for use. An elderly woman had used the library for years and enjoyed looking through the reports and materials the government produced. She noticed, however, that more of the materials were only available on CD and online. Her arthritis prevented her from spending too much time in front of a computer and she asked the librarian how she could continue to read the materials in print. “We only make available the materials the government sends and we cannot print out copies for you.” The woman maintained that it was her right to be able to read the materials in an easy and accessible way.

As a group, we created the presentation using Slideshare (now Sliderocket) and then migrated the final work-product to Microsoft PowerPoint. We also created an Information Ethics newsletter that specifically targeted intellectual freedom. All of the copy was original content and I used Microsoft Publisher to create the layout.

This Foundations course also posed several questions which required short essay responses. These essays were written individually and synthesized the information from lectures, readings and personal experience. The first artifact is one of the short essays written to address the issue of how our personal beliefs enabled us to effectively serve the needs of information users. Other paper topics included the information transfer process, the basic principles of information ethics, and the roles of information professionals.