Sarah Aspen Smiling isn’t free, some people don’t like to be addressed, can we talk about that? I am autistic. I enjoy spending time in libraries because they are often quiet, serene, calming places where I can bury my nose in a book and no one will bother me. It’s a space where I can engage with … Read more
An excerpt from a discussion in my Information Ethics class. I chose the article Ukrainian Libraries in Wartime (Gosart, 2023). It provides a glimpse into the world of a wartime librarian. I believe that the intentional destruction of cultural heritage collections such as libraries is unethical, and I don’t think that’s particularly controversial. The article … Read more
An excerpt from a class discussion on Information Ethics. Human consciousness is difficult to define. It can include things like personality, preferences, emotions, and memories. These things are encoded within the roughly 86 billion neurons of the brain. These neuron encodings are a type of information, and just like a book can be converted into … Read more
This semester, I’m learning about information ethics, and for one of my class projects I decided to examine the ethical implications of Open Educational Resources (OER) and how they compare to the traditional publishing model for educational resources. The submission format was a video presentation which I’ve struggled with before and did again this time. … Read more
The library plays a crucial role in the production of an informed electorate and providing information access to the community, while occupying a precarious space within the legal landscape. As fraught as the existing complexity is, it is further complicated by regulations that continue to evolve, with constant changes to policies and laws and challenges … Read more
This summer, I’m taking a class on information ethics. That is, ethics as applied to information. As one can imagine from that description, it’s a pretty broad field! And it’s condensed into 7 weeks, which is going to make it extra challenging for me as someone who needs longer than a neurotypical person to digest … Read more
Library users are diverse in their identities and cultures. This diversity can prompt a wide array of information needs, and affect the sources they consult when seeking information to meet them. The type of information they may need can vary from ready reference to deep research to new enormous datasets. There is more information than … Read more
Libraries face a variety of ethical concerns in their operations. Librarians often have to contend with concerns of equitable access, material copyright, and patron privacy (Luo, 2016). In order to fulfill their mandates, both public and academic libraries need to provide high quality materials that allow for the education of learners, both inside and outside … Read more
Librarianship is a two-sided coin, with the discipline of library and information science on one side, and the professional praxis in the institution on the other. Understanding the perception of librarianship requires examining both sides of this coin from both the perspective of outsiders who interact with the library and those who constitute its practitioners. … Read more
The mission of libraries has been in flux since their invention. Starting as record storage for merchants and national archives, they became status symbols for wealthy individuals, and today have become a cornerstone of the international infrastructure for national, private, and public information. Modern libraries have a broad set of goals, including entertainment, cultural preservation, … Read more
