Archive for 'Information Ethics'
The education vs. indoctrination debate
I’m the RSS reader type who subscribes to a little bit of everything and then doesn’t really pay attention to which is which when skimming through the feeds (let’s just say “detail oriented” doesn’t go on my resume). Yet somehow in the melee of my reader, the Digital Reference blog keeps getting my attention. It’s [...]
Posted by Kim Leeder on May 15th, 2008 under Higher Education, Information Ethics, Open Access.
Comments: 6
Another Meaning of “Access”
Pardon me while my head explodes.
The word “access” is one with generally good connotations among librarians. It’s in a lot of mission statements. It takes on a more mercenary meaning when it refers to the relationship between the press and power. And The New York Times has a very scary story about it today. [...]
Posted by Barbara Fister on April 20th, 2008 under Information Ethics, Political political, Worth Reading.
Comments: 2
Selective Dissemination of Information
A researcher recently discovered something odd: she couldn’t use “abortion” in a keyword search Popline, a standard database on reproductive health hosted at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. What the–?
Turns out, it’s now a stop word. Like “a” and “the.” Something you want excluded from a search. What the–?
Turns out, federal [...]
Posted by Barbara Fister on April 4th, 2008 under Idiocy, Information Ethics, Political political.
Comments: 6
How to Lose Friends and Influence People
The good news is that libraries can have Facebook pages again. Many used to, and then were evicted when Facebook decided only individuals could apply. (Whether you can run apps that lead people away from Facebook - say, into your catalog - is another matter . . .)
The bad news is that Facebook’s new [...]
Posted by Barbara Fister on November 15th, 2007 under Commercialization, Information Ethics, Information Literacy, Privacy, Technology Issues.
Comments: 4
Unconstitutional! but hold that thought…
Yes! A judge has just said (again) that NSLs are unconstitutional!! Well, duh, we knew that. But it’s good to have it on record, and with a civics lesson built right in.
Specifically, the automatic and unlimited gag order, and the indiscriminate way in which they’ve been handed out, offers the FBI an opportunity to suppress [...]
Posted by Barbara Fister on September 7th, 2007 under Information Ethics, Political political.
Comments: 2