Consultation Paper ALIA Code of Ethics for the Library and Information Services

FAIR is in general applied to data and software (not information) accessibility in higher education research (it is not used in other sectors) and there is no reference to the Five Safes framework (underlying the DAT Act and a framework used heavily in social science globally, a domain that largely informs LIS practice) and there are mixed references to personal data and personal information but n. [...] This is summed up succinctly by Snow & Shoemaker: ‘values are held; ethics are operationalized’ (2020)." If the LIS community seeks to maintain a position on moral action the reevaluation and restructuring of a code of ethics is the appropriate point to look at how moral philosophies are being embedded in principles and concepts in such a professional code. [...] LIS professionals and institutions are acknowledging and actively working to ameliorate the harms in resource description practices to those oppressed and underrepresented in the community by remediating terminology referring to people, place and groups of people (inclusionary description practices). [...] This ethical positional shift is grounded in care ethics and if this is an important ethical position for the LIS community to promote and sustain (and I would assert this is embedded in the move from "neutrality" to "respect") then this ideally is stated explicitly in a code of ethics. [...] LIS professionals are required to respect and work with privacy, censorship and intellectual property outlined in law and to respect and work with cultural protocols and traditions e.g., CARE principles.