Information Ethics in a Lib2.0 World

Information Ethics in a Lib 2.0 World Kathryn Shaughnessy St. John’s University May 7, 2010 Westchester Library Association

Information Ethics in a Lib 2.0 World This presentation is NOT…. http://sanaei.com/photos/life_getting_complicated.jpg

Information Ethics in a Lib 2.0 World Rather, it offers a framework for information ethics in relationship to justice and to librarians -- both as a professional collective and as individual people

Information Ethics – Philosophical Foundations
Philosophy
Philosophical anthropology – Who we are
Human Rights / Dignity is the basis of Justice ( UN Declaration )
Ethics
Reflection on mores: start local / cultural  reason towards universal
Practical Reason (Aristotle): Good is to be Done, Evil Avoided
Is/Ought (Kant): how things are / how they should be
Social Contract (Rawls): veil of ignorance  justice as fairness
LIBRARY Professional Guidelines / Policy Development (Prescriptive)
Positive Laws / Regulations
Attempts to safeguard/defend rights (Prescriptive)
Enforceable codification of Justice (Retributive)
Objectivity of ethics  force of positive law (Finnis)

Information Ethics & Social Justice
Rawls’ “Theory of Justice” offers two hierarchical principles
Each person is to have a right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others (equal liberties of citizenship)
Political liberty (right to vote / right to hold office)
Freedom of speech/assembly (right of communication)
Liberty of conscience / freedom of thought
Freedom of person & right to personal property
(freedom from arrest / seizure)
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.
Social Justice: Evaluate, Judge, Act
Evaluate the situation, applies the ethic, enacts justice
(evaluates success/failures, catalyst of change)

Society (Common Good) Individual (rights/responsibilities) Individual Commutative (Contractual) Contributive Distributive Justice Social Information Ethics & Social Justice Adapted from the PPT Developed by the Office for Social Justice, ASPM http://www.osjspm.org

Society (Common Good) Individual ( rights /responsibilities) Contributive Information Ethics & Social Justice Duty to contribute to the Common Good Political: voting Economic: paying taxes Environmental: Recycling Speech: Participation

Distributive Information Ethics & Social Justice Equitable distribution of benefits & burdens Political: Voter registration drives / access to offices Economic: Social Security; graduated tax burdens Environment: placement of recycling stations Speech: permits for public speech Increasingly, these distributed benefits are only available through Information & Communications Technologies Individual (rights /responsibilities ) Society (Common Good)

Information Ethics & Social Justice A B C D E F G Food / clean water Clothing Shelter “ minimum” “ extra” Distributive Justice: “Equitable” distribution of benefits & burdens

Information Ethics & Social Justice Distributive Justice: “Equitable” distribution of benefits & burdens A B C D E F G Food / clean water Clothing Shelter ICT access Education / literacy Health Elasticity of needs/minimum

Information Ethics & Social Justice A B C D E F G Food / clean water Clothing Shelter New minimum  less unequal distributions ICT access Education / literacy Health Distributive Justice: Access to information & ICTs

Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 1.0 Contributive Justice: How Librarians and Information professionals promote Social Justice
Meeting ECONOMIC need: necessary, but insufficient
Promotion of Basic literacies and life-long education
Facilitating access to ICTs
ICT Training: “information-poor” & “privacy-impaired”
Facilitating local participation in public discourse
Promoting study of local/cultural expertise
Promotion of cross-disciplinary research and communication with economists, anthropologists, educators, IT, Healthcare workers, engineers

Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0
Hallmarks of the “Social Web” include :
Ease of web-based content creation
Ease of web-based distribution: RSS / subscription
Comments & feedback
Sharing, bookmarking, podcasting
Tagging, SlideShare
Ease of communication among self-selected members
Facebook -- LinkedIn -- Twitter
For all Libraries: Development in the way information is created, distributed, cited, stored, archived, repurposed; has impact on privacy, legal and educational issues in libraries
Research Libraries: Specific development in the process of Scholarly Communication and Open Access movements
Contributive Justice: How to promote Social Justice in a Social Web World

Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0
Why is Lib 2.0 important to Information Ethics?
Professional growth: knowing the “ Information Cycle”
Personal & Patron ICT Literacy:
Requires even more critical thinking / evaluation skills of users
Be familiar with new types of information management and research tasks necessary for current success
Future: increasingly changing Information & Communication Technologies
RSS marks the major difference between old “static” web content and dynamic web resources
Intellectual Property and privacy issues
Life-long learning!
Getting the word out: Low-cost distribution mechanism of information about library resources (ex; News, calendar, new books list, wiki updates, database/catalog searches, Journal TOCs)
Always fresh: Facilitating up-to-date information/ research
and interactive participation

Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0 -- LOC
Movement towards Social Web and Lib2.0
1997-1999: scriptingNews format, designed by Dave Winer
2000 : RSS 1.0 format is developed by Rael Dornfest at O’Reilly independently
January 2001 : Wikipedia launches (now 3, 282, 000 articles in English)
March 2002: “MetaWeblog powerful blogging API. “
September 2002: Winer Develops RSS 2.0 , MetaWeblog updates
May 2003 : LinkedIn launches (33Million members as of 4/2008; 65Million as of 4/2010)
July 2003 : RSS 2.0 spec, Winer “released CC license “ thru Harvard
February 2004: Flickr launches, Facebook debuts (Undergrads only)
August 2004: “iPodders” RSS (Winer& Curry) – podcasting begins
July 2005: iTunes supports podcasts , get 1 million subscribers in first 2 days; 8,000 podcasts & 6 million listeners in one month
March - August 2006: Initial - Public Launch of Twitter
June 9, 2007: LOC joins YouTube
January 16, 2008: Library of Congress uploads collections to Flickr
January 27, 2009: Library of Congress launches Twitter Account
April 2009: LOC launches YouTube Channel
June 30, 2009: LOC launches iTunesU channel
July 9, 2009: LOC launched Facebook page
April 14 2010: Library of Congress Acquires Entire Twitter Archive
Hobson and Holtz Report, 8/4/2005 http://forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php/weblog/2005/08/05/ )
RSS 2.0 at Harvard Law website, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rssVersionHistory.html

Problems inherent in New Media – Global – UN COI (2010):
“ Language parity” & “digital divide” 
“ New Media” channels can reinforce, rather than ameliorate,
some sources of information poverty locally & in developing world.
wealthiest citizens, organizations & nations can take advantage of New Media to create and disseminate abundant information very quickly, and drown out already marginal voices .
Many calls for the “developed” areas to assist the underdeveloped with access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and for infrastructure support and training
Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0 Literacies

Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0 Literacies NOTE: Johannes Britz: Research indicating phones will not bridge the digital divide

Rawls’ Liberties and New Media Political liberty (right to vote/hold office)
Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0 Literacies Mar 30, 2010, Hilton Collins Public CIO May 23, 2010 Doug Coleman "ReadWriteWeb

Rawls’ Liberties and New Media Political liberty – access to govt.
Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0 Literacies Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age KnightComm ission Apr 07, 2010

Rawls’ Liberties and New Media Freedom of speech/assembly
Protest against dams (panama) and against G20 (PA) Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0 Literacies

Rawls’ Liberties and New Media Liberty of conscience / freedom of thought/ Freedom of person & right to personal property
(freedom from arrest / seizure)

Rawls’ Liberties and New Media Privacy
John Timmer | Last updated February 24, 2010 Ars Technica

Rawls’ Liberties and New Media Tours using GeoPositioning
Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0 Literacies ICT privacy: FourSquare “Mayors”

Information Literacy and New Media: Attribution & Authority
Tweets and “RT” strings
Code “Lifting”
YouTube:
Music/Video mash-ups
GoogleImages
TinyURL
Misinformation
& Rumor
GoogleSquared
Information Ethics & Social Justice: Lib 2.0 Literacies March 4, 2010. David Lat. Above The Law blog

Human dignity: as the basis
Community: Justice claims/codes, Common Good
Rights/duties: reciprocal, co-extensive,
but distribution of benefits/burdens not necessarily equal
Social Justice/ Information Ethics calls for:
Individual Responsibility
is not Charity
Is not merely “Optional” Volunteerism
Professional Responsibility
Continuing Education
Pro-Bono work?
Co-operation for common Good
ICT tutorials prior to Lib2.0 implementation
Learning and upholding Digital standards
Information Ethics in a Lib 2.0 World

Some ideas for Professional Opportunities:
“ Language parity” work with Foreign Language Depts and agencies
Digital Divide & ICT – local, regional, state, national & Int’l Grants
Work with marginal voices to create and disseminate information
Research assistance regarding access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and for infrastructure support.
Partnering with other libraries for literacy and ICT programs
ANTS tutorial repository
Championing Open Scholarship

Some questions regarding current or future efforts:
What local projects are you currently working on?
(ex: Baltimore Library assists patrons with online order for groceries, and acts as a pick-up spot)
What projects do you need help with? What projects require research help across multiple disciplines?
(ex: FirstFindInfo – WLS compiles sites for adults with low literacy levels)
Do we need a clearing house for ideas/helpers?
(ex: Better World Books: acts as clearinghouse for withdrawn books, re-distributes print materials to libraries that lack ICT infrastructure, sell other books to fund literacy programs.

Information Ethics in a Lib 2.0 World Thank you for your time Kathryn Shaughnessy Instructional Services Librarian [email_address] LibGuide on Social Web & ICT literacy http://libguides.stjohns.edu/Social_web Links to sites in this presentation: http://delicious.com/kgshaughnessy/WLA_presentation

Information Ethics in a Lib2.0 World

by Kathryn Shaughnessy

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