ASSESMENT OF PROFESSIONAL WORK ETHICS GUIDELINE OF ALA ON LIBRARY STAFF SERVICE DELIVERY IN SELECTED ACADEMIC LIBRARIES IN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of professional work ethics as provided by ALA guidelines on library staff service delivery of the Addis Ababa, Gondar and Dire Dawa universities libraries. For all three libraries, separately identifying the types of professional work ethics in the ALA guidelines for library staff service delivery, Identifying the impact of professional work ethics guidelines of ALA on library staff service delivery in academic libraries of Ethiopia., To find out the relationship between professional work ethics and library staff service delivery have been the major objectives. Besides, to achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher used cross-sectional survey study with both quantitative and qualitative data gathering instruments. The study populations were all library staff employees of all the three libraries. The descriptive statistical tools such as mean value, standard deviations, frequency and percentage were used to see significant differences among responses of respondents. The findings of this study revealed that respondents from AAU were Strongly Agreed with all types of ALA guidelines items except secrecy which the decision was agreed. GU were strongly agreed with the items access to information, secrecy, Neutrality, Colleague relationship and Independence of Judgment and Respondents from DDU were strongly agreed with the items Neutrality, Colleague relationship and Independence of Judgment in the ranking order of their agreements. The findings also revealed that respondents from AAU were Strongly Agreed with the level of all library and information service delivery process and agreed to provision of interlibrary loan, Neat library environment provision, and Audio-visual materials delivery in ranking orders. The results also implied that agreement level on provision of library services of interlibrary loan, Neat library environment and Audio-visual materials provision have been found to be undecided by respondents from GU, similarly the response from respondents of D.D.U library staffs indicated undecided level of agreement on service delivery provision of Institutional repository services, Interlibrary loan service, enough information resources, Neat library environment in their ranking order which also can be an indication of negative agendas on this sector. In addition to this, respondents from AAU were Strongly Agreed with xv most of the specified professional work ethics items as they relate to service delivery process. Similarly respondents from GU agreed with all the specified professional work ethics in relation to the effect on service delivery process. The findings also revealed level of agreement on the issue of restriction of access to materials has proven to be found undecided by GU staffs thus can lead to a negative level of service delivery. In relation to this it also found out that decision level of agreement of DDU library staffs on professional work ethics items in relation to service delivery was resoundingly undecided at most. This is clearly an issue that should be given a greater attention as it has a serious negative impact on the level of effective and efficient service delivery, thus indicating the staffs of DDU have either lacked knowledge or are unaware of the principles. Finally findings showed that LIS services in the mentioned academic libraries in the study all have a strongly positive relationship with professional work ethics