Competency A: Ethics and Values
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.
Introduction to Competency A
In the context of this competency, MLIS students develop the ability to name the principles that the library profession has agreed to hold itself to, followed by a demonstration of those principles. The ethics of librarianship are extensively documented. The American Library Association adopted its Code of Ethics in 1939 and has amended it four times, most recently in 2021 (American Library Association [ALA], 2021). The Code opens with a commitment to its altruistic mindset: “We provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources…” It goes on to address intellectual freedom, privacy, and intellectual property, stating that “We respect intellectual property rights and advocate balance between the interests of information users and rights holders” (ALA, 2021). While these statements are short, the difficulty is in applying them to a specific patron, a specific collection, or a specific tool.
The library profession also clearly states its values positions. In 2024 the ALA Council adopted a revised set of five core values: access, equity, intellectual freedom and privacy, public good, and sustainability (ALA, 2024). This list was useful to me, as a student, because each value can be tested against a reality. Access asks whether a person can reach the resource. Sustainability, which the ALA describes as “making choices that are good for the environment, make sense economically, and treat everyone equitably” (ALA, 2024), asks whether a service can be kept going without harm. The operational and testable nature of these values pushes beyond empty slogans towards actionable results.
A third foundational document shapes how I think about the ethics of information itself. The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education includes the frame “Authority Is Constructed and Contextual” (Association of College and Research Libraries [ACRL], 2016). The frame holds that different communities recognize different kinds of authority, and that the level of authority a person needs depends on how the information will be used. In my mind, the claim exists as an ethical one as much as an instructional one. If authority is built, then someone is doing the building, and that person is responsible for what was included or excluded. This reality also allows visitors to the library to be active participants rather than passive recipients of information.
Ethics and values as competency matter to me because of the work I do outside the library. I develop training data and evaluation rubrics for artificial intelligence systems. In that work I see how a set of hidden instructions can shape every answer a system gives while the person asking remains largely oblivious to the many decisions made in the bot’s training corpus by developers and annotators. A chatbot does not need to state anything false in order to mislead (although “hallucinated” or confidently incorrect information does occur, such occurrences can be less insidious). It only needs to emphasize some true things and stay quiet about others. Librarians have always endeavored to work on the other side of that problem. A reference librarian shows the patron where an answer came from, and a cataloger records who created a work in a way that allows the patron to make decisions about the source as part of their information seeking.
The competency matters to the profession because libraries hold public trust. Historically, people have believed the librarian is working for them and has no hidden interest. That trust is easy to lose. It depends on small, consistent acts: showing a commitment to transparency, crediting a creator, asking permission before recording a person, telling a manager what a program will really cost. The three pieces of evidence below show how I set about making those decisions in an instructional design context, in a published article, and in a recommendation written for a public library.
Evidence
My preparation for this competency came from INFO 204, Information Professions, where I first studied the ALA Code of Ethics as a working document; from INFO 210, Reference and Information Services, where I applied the Code and the Library Bill of Rights to the reference interview; and from INFO 254, Information Literacy and Learning, where I designed instruction around how the selection of sources shapes what learners come to believe. My work for Scottsdale Public Library carried these principles into practice, and my freelance work in AI evaluation has given me daily practice with questions of bias, fairness, and disclosure.
Evidence 1: Frankenstein’s AI Narrator (learning experience and facilitator script)
This is a slide deck with a full facilitator script for a live online session that I designed for INFO 254 (Information Literacy and Learning). Participants are given links to two chatbots that each claim to be the aviator Charles Lindbergh (Lucky Lindy and Charles Lindbergh). They are asked to question the chatbot as if they had found it during research, to record what they learn on a shared Miro board, and to rate how much they trust the answers. After five minutes I reveal the system prompt, which is the set of hidden instructions I wrote to shape what each chatbot would emphasize and avoid. I then present three portraits of Lindbergh: the celebrated pilot, the public figure who accepted a medal from the Nazi government and spoke for the America First Committee, and the father whose child was kidnapped and killed. Participants compare these portraits with what the chatbot led them to discover.
This artifact demonstrates the competency because its subject targets the ethics of sourcing. It teaches the ACRL frame on constructed authority by having learners experience it. The activity also required ethical decisions from me as the designer. I chose to withhold the purpose of the exercise at the start, which is a form of deception, so I built in a complete reveal and a reflection period in the same session, and I kept every response anonymous. The script states the conclusion I wanted learners to reach, which was the fact that the chatbot did not lie, and yet still influenced what they discovered.
Evidence 2: “Photogrammetry & the Chalk Festival” (published article)
The above article appeared in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of Archeota, the journal of the SJSU student chapter of the Society of American Archivists, beginning on page 16. It describes my attempt to preserve chalk murals, which are washed away within days, by scanning them as three-dimensional models.
The article demonstrates ethical practice in two ways. First, it shows respect for creators and for the people recorded. One section describes scanning a working artist. I recorded her only after she offered to take part, and the article states that she “gave express permission to be mentioned” by way of a Google Form that outlined the intended image use to allow for informed consent. Each model shown in the article is captioned with the name of the artist who made the mural. Second, the article is honest about what the record fails to capture. I report that the scanned colors are duller than in a photograph, that the glitter in the pastels is lost, and that my scan of the artist captured only part of her. An archive that overstates its own completeness misleads its future users, and I wanted the limits on the record to be part of the record.
Evidence 3: Responsible Makerspace: Recycling and Limiting Plastic Waste (report for Scottsdale Public Library)
I wrote this four-page report for the Scottsdale Public Library makerspace initiative in 2025. It examines whether the library should recycle the plastic waste produced by its 3D printers and recommends a filament recycling program along with practices that prevent waste in the first place.
This artifact shows the core value of sustainability applied to a real service. It also shows honesty toward the people who would approve the program. I calculated the return on a prepaid collection container and reported that the financial gain would be about $17.60 per container, which I described as a neutral effect on the budget. I also included research showing that PLA filament, although made from renewable sources, is not fully biodegradable. A less careful report would have presented recycling as a clear saving and PLA as a harmless material. I gave decision makers the numbers and let the case rest on the benefit to the community.
Conclusion
I expect to apply this competency in every role that involves designs that influence how people meet information, whether that is a library program, a training module, or an AI system. In each case I will ask what the user is not being shown and whether the creators and subjects of the material have been treated fairly. To stay current I will follow the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom and its Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy, revisions to the ACRL Framework, and the ethics and policy work published by the Association for Information Science and Technology.
References
American Library Association. (2019). Library bill of rights. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill
American Library Association. (2021). Code of ethics. https://www.ala.org/tools/ethics
American Library Association. (2024). Core values of librarianship. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/advocacy/intfreedom/corevalues
Association of College and Research Libraries. (2016). Framework for information literacy for higher education. https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework