”Sometimes I hesitate”- gray areas within professional ethics of the public library organization

This study examined gray areas within professional ethics of a public library organization and investigated the relationship between the library as an organization and the librarian as an employee when it comes to support and opportunities to make exceptions to rules and regulations. This relationship is then related to workplace issues.Data were gathered via interviews with six librarians who were placed into two focus groups. Library organization documents that contain rules and regulations (guidelines) were examined. The presumption was that conformity between librarians’ experiences and actions and the organization’s guidelines will tell us something about workplace conditions. The theoretical framework is derived from the work of Richard M. Hare, a moral philosopher who separates ethics into two levels: intuitive and critical. These levels are used to analyze the data.The main findings are that ethical awareness among the librarians is weak, and there is a tendency to call ethical issues approaches, rather than ethics. There is extensive support from the library organization for making exceptions, especially to ordinary library rules such as lending without a library card. But when it comes to what librarians understand as the most important and difficult task, i.e., ways in which visitors are approached, organizational support is inadequate. For the library organization, there is more to do to make the workplace more satisfying for librarians so that ethical gray areas can be minimized.Program: Bibliotekari