Ethics in relation to the professional education in the field of Information Science (1970-2006)

Abstract

It analyses ethics in relation to the professional education in the field of Information Science. It points out main aspects and questions of the matter as a result of a content analysis on ethics thematic presence in Information Science periodic literature. The starting point is an article survey in a specific database (BRAPCI), period 1970-2006, which includes 4212 articles, published by 26 periodicals. The corpus obtained consists of 39 articles from 16 periodicals. Research trends are revealed in order to give evidence of ethics and the education of information professionals approach, as well as related matters and main questions introduced by the authors. Describers’ frequency, periodic of origin and year of publication are also analyzed. It reports the low occurrence of discussions about ethics and its importance for the education of professionals. It still shows the variety of points of view on this question, and emphasizes ethics relevance for education and citizen’s formation for labor world.