I. We provide the highest level of service to all library users… ALA Code of Ethics
That’s what public libraries do, right? Provide service to everyone, respectfully and professionally — and without conditioning that respect on checking your papers. If you walk through those doors, you’re welcome here.
When you’re standing in the international arrivals area at Logan, you’re in a waiting area between a pair of large double doors, exiting from Customs, and then the doors to the outside world. We stood in a crowd of hundreds, chanting “Let Them In!” Sometimes, some mysterious number of minutes after a flight arrival, the doors would open, and tired people and their luggage pour through, from Zurich, Port-au-Prince, Heathrow, anywhere.
And the Code of Ethics ran through my head because that’s what we were chanting, wasn’t it? That anyone who walks through those doors is welcome here. Let them in.
Library values are American values. And if you have a stake in America, don’t let anyone build an America that’s less than what we as a profession stand for.
andromeda yelton 
Thank you for this. I have a post that I wrote recently that needed some direction and your post gave it that direction.
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You’re welcome! I am eager to read that post and please feel free to link it here 🙂
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Will do! In fact, if it is ok with you I would like to use “We provide the highest level of service to all library users” as the title to my post as well!
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You, too, have the power to quote core documents of your professional association! 😀
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