An excerpt from a discussion in my Information Ethics class.
I chose the article Ukrainian Libraries in Wartime (Gosart, 2023). It provides a glimpse into the world of a wartime librarian. I believe that the intentional destruction of cultural heritage collections such as libraries is unethical, and I don’t think that’s particularly controversial. The article discusses how some libraries have been sending materials from their collections to soldiers on the front, to hospitals, and to areas of the country that have had their own libraries destroyed. Again, not particularly controversial. But one thing that caught my attention was that “some libraries have been converted into volunteer headquarters to address the army’s needs.” I can imagine the Russian invaders doing similar in occupied areas of Ukraine for their own forces. A deontological perspective might propose a maxim that using library resources to host meetings to plan the taking of human life to be unethical, while a contractual ethicist might look at the differences in motivations of these two militaries and determine that one side being the aggressor delegitimizes any ethical defense of such actions while conversely legitimizing those engaging in the self-defense of their homeland. It also makes a difference who is taking the action to convert the library: the Ukrainians are presumably doing so with the support of their local community, whom they are not occupying by force, and thus utilizing library resources this way is an effective and ethical way to serve the needs of the local community.
Gosart, U. (2023, May 4). Ukrainian Libraries in Wartime. Library Journal. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/ukrainian-libraries-in-wartime