Published: February 7, 2017 by Anna Maloney

A new interdisciplinary ethics course for archivists, records and information professionals will be offered in the MARA program during the summer 2017 session.

In the summer 2017 session, the MARA program will be offering a new one-credit course on ethics and recordkeeping. This guest post was written by course instructor, Norman Mooradian. 

I am excited to be offering this new course, Ethics for Archivists and Records and Information Professionals. As an interdisciplinary course that draws on the fields of ethics, technology and law, the course will be a first of its kind. The course is designed to provide records professionals and archivists with a foundation in professional ethics as applied to the information fields.

Drawing on applied ethics principles found in major professional fields, it will develop and apply the principles, rules and concepts of professional ethics to the information fields. Students will gain literacy in widely used concepts in ethics and law. The foundational concepts and reasoning methods will provide a basis for decision making, communications, and development of policy and procedures. It will identify professional duties common to record professionals and archivists. 

Students will learn how to address ethical issues such as conflicts of interest, intellectual property, management ethics, whistle blowing and leaking, and information privacy. The ethical implications of managing digital content and electronic records will be explored. Current technological platforms such as enterprise content management will be discussed, as will emerging technologies such as big data and cognitive computing. 

My own background is interdisciplinary. I have worked in the enterprise content management field for more than 15 years in roles that include system architecture, solution development, education and training, and technical configuration.  I have also worked in higher education, having earned a PhD and MA in Philosophy from the Ohio State University. My teaching has been in the areas of business and professional ethics, ethics/history of ethics, logic and other topics. My research interests and publications have been in the areas of business and information ethics and include the text that will be used in this course.