The relationship between social responsibility and public libraries accountability: The mediating role of professional ethics and conscientiousness

Abstract

Public libraries are powerful social institutions whose services have a positive contribution to civil society. As one of the most important and most visited social institutions, such libraries are responsible to the community. Promoting social responsibility in public libraries requires addressing issues such as librarians’ accountability, professional ethics, and conscientiousness. Accordingly, this study strives to address this research gap by examining the relationship between organizational social responsibility and accountability perceived by staff in public libraries. Based on theoretical foundations, librarians’ professional ethics and conscientiousness were considered as mediating variables. Quantitative research method was used for this study and six hypothesized relationships were formulated to develop a conceptual model. Study data were collected through a questionnaire. Data obtained from 362 librarians of Iranian public libraries were analyzed running SPSS software and Smart PLS 3.0. The results revealed that perceived social responsibility of public libraries directly contributes to their perceived responsiveness. Furthermore, the implementation of social responsibility by public libraries reinforces the professional ethics and conscientiousness of librarians. As a result, the professional ethics and conscientiousness will lead to improving the accountability of public libraries. Accordingly, this study can help public library administrators, policymakers, and librarians to develop more comprehensive strategies for providing services to citizens by focusing on their social responsibilities, thereby establishing their place in society.

Alethic Rights and Alethic Pluralism in Libraries

“…In any case, neither before buying a book nor before providing information "about the outside world" to a user would it make sense to require librarians to personally verify their truthfulness, re-performing mathematical calculations, repeating chemical experiments and replicating geographical explorations described or implied therein. On the other hand, even outside the library there are very few truths of which we have direct personal certainty, and we manage to survive only thanks to a complex social network for transmitting trust in the knowledge of which others have ascertained the truth or, at least, the probability (Wilson 1983;Sloman and Fernbach 2018). Because, basically, both at the level of personal beliefs and scientific theories, what is most often affirmed is not the absolute certainty of a particular proposition, but a certain degree of probability that it reflects the reality; and probability is even more difficult than certainty to ascertain and measure objectively.…”

“…And if, in times of pandemics, fake news or other real or presumed natural or cultural disasters, it is believed that the standard balance between the various values that guide the professional ethics of librarians should be temporarily modified to give more weight, for example, to the duty of any organization, both public and private, not to jeopardize the health of its users, to the duty of any employer not to force its employees to risk getting sick in order not to lose their salary and to the duty of any national government to avoid excessive dissemination of opinions dangerous to public health, then there is already -in many ethical codes -the appropriate tool, namely the reference to the principle of social responsibility (Harger 2016, Soltani-Nejad et al 2022. This principle requires librarians, as well as almost every other category of workers, not to respect only the values more specifically of their profession (such as, for librarians, especially that of freedom of access to information), but also the main general ethical values circulating in one's own community.…”

Application of theory of planned behavior in identifying factors affecting online health information seeking intention and behavior of women

“…In this study, SMART PLS was used for structural equation modeling (SEM) as well as the examination of the research hypotheses. SEM with the technique of partial least squares (PLS) is a multivariate statistical technique that has been recently popularized (Soltani-Nejad et al, 2021). This method is a two-step modeling approach.…”