Ethics as a concept describing what is good or bad is a system of the moral principles that determine what should or should not be done. Concrétisation of moral relations in the scope of individual professions is called a code ofprofessional ethics. The field of archive studies has its own code of professional ethics, which was adopted at the International Archive Congress in Beijing in autumn 1996. The Slovene translation of this code was published in 1997 in Arhivi, the publication of the Slovene Archive Society and the Slovene Archives. Codes of professional ethics generally define objects in professional practice, encapsulating the basic principles of professional work, relations to the users of their services, relations between the employees and relations to the society. The practice of complying with the principles of the code of ethics hence creates a positive public opinion of the profession, for which the code is used. All general characteristics of a code ofprofessional ethics can also be found in the Archive code, which consists of six introductory statements and ten provisions or principles. They define relations that evolve from the professional work in preservation and presentation of the archive material as a part of cultural heritage.