FINAL PROJECT

An important objective of librarians and other information professionals is to carry out their duties in an ethical manner.  A “Code of Professional Ethics” can be extremely useful in this regard.  A code of ethics is a list of guiding principles for ethical action.   For example, a code of ethics tends to contain statements of the form “You shall do X” (e.g., “You shall protect intellectual property rights”) or “You shall not do Y” (e.g., “You shall not censor information sources”).

More often than not, a code of ethics simply contains a list of such guiding principles.  However, it is useful for people to understand the underlying ethical reasoning behind these principles.  For one thing, it easier for people to consistently follow these principles if they understand how they are justified.  Without such understanding, these principles can become “dead dogmas” that people fail to put into action.  (See, e.g., Chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.)  In addition, according to many ethical theories, ethical action requires more than just doing the right thing.  One has to do the right thing for the right reason. (See, e.g., Book II, Section 4 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.)  As a result, it is not enough for people to simply follow these principles; they need to understand how they are justified.

Fortunately, it is no longer necessary for a code of ethics to be a static list of guiding principles.  With the invention of hypertext, the author can link each guiding principle to information about the underlying ethical reasoning.  For example, the author can provide links to the justifications for these principles, suggestions for resolving conflicts between these principles, and examples of concrete applications of these principles.  The individual project for this course is to create an interactive code of ethics of this sort for information professionals.

Details

Your code of ethics should be a stand-alone hypertext document that you have created.  It may contain links to a few well-chosen external sites.  However, it should primarily contain links to information that you have prepared.

You can focus on one particular type of information professional (e.g., archivists) if you wish.

You can focus on one particular area of information ethics (e.g., intellectual property) if you wish.

This hypertext document should make clear the intended scope of your code of ethics.

Your code of ethics can be based on an existing code of professional ethics for information professionals.

You need to get my OK on what you plan to do before you get too far along.  In particular, you should send me a brief paragraph describing what you plan to do.

Your code of ethics is due on Tuesday, December 3rd.

Please send me questions about this assignment via the "Final Project Questions" forum or via my WebCT Mail.

Note: You can post your code of ethics on web space provided by your own ISP.  Alternatively, you can get free web space when you apply for your UA email account.