Ethical Considerations in Classification Practice: A Case Study Using Creationism and Intelligent Design

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Library

Publication Date

7-18-2011

Abstract

This article re-visits a scenario from 1987: a university president required a library director to reclassify some materials into a science classification. The author looks at the prominence of the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association in the general library literature and in classification and cataloging practice literature. The issue of censorship is also discussed. The author then reviews classification for Creationism and Intelligent design and some decision-making processes one could use when deciding on the professional ethics of such a request, concluding that in some cases the ethical action might indeed be to go ahead with the reclassification.

Comments

This article was originally published in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

Cataloging & Classification Quarterly

Rights

Copyright © 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

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