Professionalism in Librarianship: Shifting the Focus from Malpractice to Good Practice

Library Trends, Wntr, 2001 by Randy Diamond, Martha Dragich

ABSTRACT

MUCH OF THE PREVIOUS DISCUSSION IN LIBRARY LITERATURE about professional standards concerns librarian malpractice risks. After explaining why these risks have not materialized, this article examines the role of professional standards in fostering good practice in librarianship. Components of good practice include professional knowledge, core competencies, and professional values.

INTRODUCTION

Do librarians face significant liability risks in providing information services to their patrons? Yes, in theory, if measured against library literature devoted to information professionals' potential liability--but hardly at all, if one considers that, in today's litigious society, there have been no reported court decisions in which a librarian was sued for a service-related occurrence. The purpose of this article is not to close the door on the liability question but to refocus that question toward a more productive inquiry into what constitutes good practice in librarianship. Malpractice liability for any professional sanctions a departure from the profession's standard of acceptable practice. Thus, discussions about malpractice cannot proceed until at least these minimal standards of practice are shared widely among members of the profession.

We argue that legally acceptable boundaries of behavior should not solely define library practices. Rather than setting a liability-avoiding threshold, librarians should articulate principles and practices ensuring that members of the profession function at the highest level. Librarians' struggle for continuing professional viability in the information marketplace has brought librarianship to a critical phase in which efforts to redefine and reinvent the profession have taken hold in various professional associations and in libraries of all kinds. One indication of this trend is the effort of several professional organizations to develop "core competencies."(1) Core competencies may be a catalyst for developing standards of care for librarians, but standards of care are only part of what constitutes good practice. The lesson from professional malpractice cases is that professional standards typically set minimum legal requirements and do not inspire members to achieve higher performance levels than what is legally required. In shifting the inquiry from malpractice to good practice, we do not dismiss the importance of professional standards in the legal sense, but the good practice concept we seek requires a more broad-based inquiry into the professional groundings of librarianship.

The first part of this article explains why librarian liability has not materialized. Although courts have not ruled on whether librarians have a duty of care in serving their users, it is important to understand how courts decide whether a particular occupation is a "profession" for malpractice purposes. The second part of this article explores the potential and limitations of professional standards and non-enforceable ethical codes for ensuring good information practice. The third part of this article examines the professional groundings of librarianship. The core criteria distinguishing professional work from the work of other occupations--professional knowledge, skills, and shared values--offer a blueprint for good practice. The article concludes with a discussion of the librarian's critical educational role in the digital age and an example of a successful reinvention of a library illustrating principles and applications of good practice in librarianship today.

LIBRARIAN LIABILITY THEORIES

In 1975, Alan Angoff posed the classic library malpractice hypothetical. A library was sued for providing a patron with a book containing inaccurate information about how to build a patio. The patio collapsed, and the patron sued the library for personal injuries and property damage. Holding the library liable for faulty information in a book would put librarians in the impossible position of having to verify every fact in a book before recommending it to a patron (Dragich, 1989, p. 265). In an actual faulty information case involving a defamation claim against a video rental store, the court stated that "one who merely plays a secondary role in disseminating information published by another, as in the case of libraries ..., could not be held liable for defamation unless it knew or had reason to believe the information was libelous" (p. 270). By analogy, where the faulty information originates outside the library, as it does in Angoff's hypothetical example, the library is not liable unless it has reason to know or suspect that the information is faulty. Any claim the patron may have in Angoff's hypothetical case is against the author or the publisher, not the library. The attenuated relationship between a librarian and the source of the information negates a key element of malpractice liability--i.e., duty. It is the duty of authors and publishers to verify the accuracy of information they produce. Librarians are intermediaries whose connections to the faulty information are too remote to create a legal duty to patrons under these circumstances.