This paper is about values, specifically the values that underlie our work in libraries. Some of you may know that the American Library Association had a difficult time over a number of years trying to formulate a statement of the core values of the profession. It has consumed the time of two task forces over almost a decade, and the latest product of the second was accepted by the ALA Council, largely on the grounds that it consists of a ten item list without explanation and that list is drawn from various existing ALA documents. I am convinced that this difficulty in formulating a statement of values is not only in the usual problems of committees coming up with anything that is succinct and laden with meaning and arguments about wording. These are bad enough, though quite understandable. Think, for example, that a poem is the ultimate example of writing that is laden with meaning and all about wording, and then go on to reflect on the fact that there are very few poems written collaboratively and none written by a committee. The central difficulty lies in the fact that the very idea of a value is hard to grasp and easily confused with other beneficial and beneficent things. Just one example will suffice to make this point. The second ALA task force has included "Diversity" on its list of core values. Hard to argue with that, one would think, until you reflect on the meaning of the word. In the modern library world, "diversity" means equal representation of all classes of people in a workforce and equal representation of all opinions and cultures in our collections. In other words, "diversity" is a manifestation of our ideals, desirable because of our beliefs in equal access, equal opportunity, intellectual freedom, etc. The idea of distinguishing between values and desirable outcomes transcends semantics and goes to the heart of the discussion.