Nonaffiliated Users in Academic Libraries: Using W.D. Ross’s Ethical Pluralism to Make Sense of the Tough Questions

Abstract

Though the academic library’s primary mission is to serve the students, faculty, and staff of its parent institution, would-be users not officially associated with the institution frequently call upon the library to provide services and/or resources. Requests by these nonaffiliated users (sometimes called community users) pose a moral quandary for public-service staff. Library personnel must weigh the demand to be helpful against their responsibility to make students, faculty, and staff their top priority. The authors employ W.D. Ross’s pluralistic framework of prima facie duties to examine the conflicting obligations at the heart of this ethical dilemma.