To keep from being caught by the police, they threw their pamphlets out of windows during parades. They crawled into the trolley yards at night and stuck their pamphlets to the roofs of trolleys, and, as the sun dried the mornig dew, the pamphlets flew off into the city streets. They used wet pieces of bread to stick the pamphlets to roofs; the pamphlets would float down to the streets after pigeons ate the bread.

After 20 months, Viktor was caught and sentenced to five years in a Gulag. He survived and, after Glasnost, the Gulag where he was imprisoned was turned into a museum. Today, Victor is on the board of that museum. He is also a librarian.

Viktor has what Code of Ethics 20th Anniversary speaker Rushwoth Kidder refers to as moral courage, a willingness to endure significant danger for the sake of principle.

It’s rare that librarians in this country are faced with dangerous situations, but we do face moral dilemmas, instances when two values we hold as right collide. When this occurs, we look to our Code of Ethics, one of the older professional ethical codes in this country. When challenged by competing values, we turn to to it to help us defend our belief in protecting privacy, our resistance to censorship, and our insistance on honesty. It’s what we’ve been doing since the the code was accepted 70 years ago today (though we revised it in 1981, 1995, and gave it a minor but important revision, regarding intellectual property, in 2008).

As Dr. Kidder pointed out, chocolate, libraries, and ethics are countercyclical. That is, we thrive when other elements of the economy are suffering. In his opinion, and I have no reason to doubt him because he knows far more about ethics than I do, people are coming to the library, especially right now, not just in search of free information, entertainment, or assistance finding jobs. They’re coming because we help to create a culture of integrity, a safe place for people to develop their moral compasses.

While I wouldn’t have thought to put it that way, that’s certainly one of the things that libraries gave me as a choild, and something they continue to offer me today. It’s nice to think they offer that to everyone and that everyone sees it as valuable, and so I do–that’s exactly what I think.

“I have three,” I told him.

“That explains a few things,” he said.

Sometimes you know someone is slighting you and all you can do is smile. This was one of those times.

The thing is, despite that interaction, I tend to romanticize airport security. Not the people who are doing it–I recognize that they’re fallible, and occasionally grumpy or worse–but I feel safe when I fly, because I believe the system itself works.

My take on librarianship is the opposite of my take on airport security. I completely romanticize librarians. I’ve never been around a group of people who seem kinder or smarter or more dedicted. But a lot of the systems seem broken, both in our libraries and our professional associations.

That was how I felt after I attended Friday’s Forum on Education. Apparently, ALA has spent the last ten years reviewing various crises in library education. One of the most recent reviews, a presidential task force charged with creating a list of core competences, was the subject of yesterday’s meeting.

The speakers were brilliant. Michael Gorman moderated, and Rick Rubin, Linda Williams, Ken Haycock, and Janet Swan Hill presented. They are polished speakers, passionate librarians, and they have spent a great deal of time learning about these issues and working to improve the overall state of library education.

Unfortunately, I left the meeting not knowing much more than when it started. I’m not even sure if the last syllable of “competences” sounds like “says” or “seize”.

I know the core competences are a statement of outcomes, that they’re intentionally general, and that they’re intended to invigorate the conversation, frame curricula, and inform employers about what they can expect from people who have have obtained a Masters in LIS.

For now, that may be all there is to know about core competences or accreditation standards. Janet Swan Hill, who you really, really must see present, said she found the ALA accreditation standards really nonspecific. “The first time I read them,” she said, “I thought it was just the preamble.”

That’s how I felt about the Forum. As a recent graduate, I’d hoped to get a better sense of what other library students were learning. As a new library director, I wanted to learn more about the people I hope to hire in the near future. As someone who hopes to teach at a library school, I wanted insight into the curricula I’ll be using. I got none of that.

Sometimes you know you’re being slighted. This was one of those times.