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Salvete!<br>
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I have to second that, Brenda. It's rather commonplace for the Ethics Departments, with psychology in particular, to ensure that data is kept confidential. There are a number of good reasons for this - for example, if one were studying reactions to race, folks that _think_ their answers might be monitored might produce a different answer. (There's a lot of press about the Bradley effect in US Politics at the moment; this is a similar thing.) On one hand, it keeps a lot of very cool experiments from happening. I don't think you'd be able to repeat the Milgram experiments in quite the same way, for instance. On the other hand, it protects respondents from touchy answers and pressures they might not have faced, else. I think we both speak our minds regardless of how others might react, MJ. I respect you for that, but there are some in more delicate positions than our own.<br>
The line on what is and is not ethical ia very hazy in the US when it breaks down to LIS. ALA's kind of irresponsibly sidestepped the issue. IFLA's been a bit more forthright, fortunately. In general, there just *isn't* that much on ethics and Library science. There's enough (if you ask me) on Computer Science (ya'll are almost always ahead of us). There's some on Law Librarianship (since they're lawyers, and love rules...) The first hit on google is actually not too bad<br>
http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1820/<br>
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I'm kicking myself right now, since I used a book for a presentation on Ethics, and I can't remember the authors and the title save that it was published rather recently in the UK, and the whole thing was on Ethics and Information Science, and in part Library Science. It was short, too. I think it was purple. (Man I feel like a patron!)<br>
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I already took Brenda's survey, and think it's fine for my response to be a public matter, but I'm not sure there's a way to flag which response is mine without messing up Brenda's work. Generally if its anonymised, then it's fair play, but it's hard to do that without reducing a lot to hard numbers.<br>
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Cheers,<br>
Brooke
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