Information Literacy Foundations

There is an element of self-determination to defining ethics and your own ethical standards. In the broadest sense it comes down to doing what is "right" vs. what is "wrong." This is then applied in how you approach research and how you approach the use of that information in the creation of new knowledge and content in the world.

Many disciplines and professional fields have a subset of ethics for their disciplinary or professional practice. This allows them to specifically address situations and contexts that are narrower than those with which the broader society may be concerned.

In Libraries & Information Science, as a discipline, we consider ethics in connection to information in wide-ranging ways.

• Ethically accessing information sources
  • Paying the legally protected price for access to the source or navigating to the source through legal channels
• Ethically searching for information
  • Searching with openness and integrity to learning from sources
  • Searching with reflective approach and consideration of worldview
• Ethically using content that someone else has created
  • Reusing the content in ways that the creator has permitted or that are legally permitted
  • Reusing the information from others' content with honesty and context acknowledging the creator's purpose and authority
• Ethically representing the discoveries and arguments of others
  • Acknowledging the work of others through citation and representation of ongoing discourse
• Ethically producing your own content
  • Producing content that is informed and aligns with your own ethics
  • Producing content in ways that do not exploit or harm others
• Ethically distributing/publishing your content for others to learn from
  • Sharing your content on platforms that align with your ethics
  • Permitting access and reuse permissions that align with your ethics

To practice ethical use of information you have to cite your sources!!! Responsible research demands that credit is given where it is due.

Admittedly, citations are not known for being the most fun part of a research project. But just because they aren't fun to craft, proofread, and format doesn't mean that they can be overlooked. Your credibility as a producer of knowledge, especially in academic works, relies heavily on pointing to where your information came from. Failing to do so means that you have effectively stolen others' ideas and paraded as if they were your own. Thievery, it goes without saying, is not ethical! 

The challenge of ethically constructing your citations is not one you need to overcome alone. There are style guides, citation managers, library study guides, and librarians dedicated to supporting you through the process of citing.