 Welcome, everyone, to Information Communities. This is Michael Stevens. This is our module on Information Ethics and joining us today is Martin Garner. He is Dean of the Kramer Family Library at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. And he's author of the Information Ethics Chapter from Information Services today. Martin, welcome, and I will turn it over to you. Thank you. Michael, thank you so much for the invitation. And I'm really pleased to be with you to talk about this. So let's go over what I will be covering in this brief time with you. I'm going to throw out a couple examples of some ethical dilemmas that we'll consider. And then to put those in context, we're going to take a look at two important policy statements from the American Library Association. We'll talk a little bit about some future trends with ethical implications. Come back to those dilemmas that I introduced at the start. And then we will talk just a little bit about ethics and information communities. I'm going to post some questions that you can think about. And then round up with some resources and some tips for handling ethical issues in the future. So let's just dive right in there. Okay. So you can see here that we have an issue in a public library where someone is having some problem with some internet filters. And so what I want you to do with each of these is think a little bit about some of the issues for the dilemmas. So you're in a public library. You have someone who is a minor. You have someone who is looking at hate speech. And you're in a filtered environment. So these are things to be considered while you are thinking about the dilemma. Next one. We have a different type of library, a school library. And so we have a parent who is asking for access to their children's information. There may be some federal laws in place. There may be some state laws in place. And you have the issue that there's a sensitive subject that is being covered. So we have a student who is asking about books on alcoholic parents. What would you do? The next dilemma. This could happen at any library. You have a new web browser reservation system. And it has some administrative features that you might want to turn on. And so there are some possibilities in terms of record storage here. Are there laws that you need to consider? What sort of information would you want to collect for operating your library? The next dilemma. And we have a main desk here. This could be a public library. It could be an academic library. At my academic library, we do let the public come in. In fact, we welcome them. And so you have a 16-year-old daughter. So still a minor, but an older minor who wants to check out an R-rated movie. And wants to know what your policy is. Should there be restrictions based on ratings? Finally, this is an academic library setting for those of you who are considering joining me in this part of the profession. And so there's a concern about plagiarism, which is also an ethical concern for us. And she wants to know what books have been checked out by those students. And so there are some concerns about balancing plagiarism concerns with privacy of the students. So what would you do? So those are some dilemmas to think about. We're going to come back to those. First thing we're going to jump into in terms of a policy statement would be the Library Bill of Rights. As you can see, it has been around for a very long time. And it has been revised a number of times over the years. The last full revision was in 1980. And so what I have here on the screen for you is kind of my condensed version of it. I just want to go through the points that correspond to the different articles. So books should be provided for everyone no matter who wrote them. A little bit of context for that. When you think about the red scare and concerns being raised about communist writing books, this is partly where this is coming from but now there are, I'm sure you could think of examples today where someone might be concerned about someone's background when they write something. And while it does talk about books, we do like to consider this to be all resources that might be available in the Library, whether it's something that you can read or something that you can view or something that you can play or something that you could see online. We can get back to that little part in a little bit. The next point, the Library should provide materials on all points of view even if you don't agree with them. So they're, unpack this one a little bit. There are some concerns that are raised when we say materials on all points of view. Is it reasonable to ask a Library to try to buy access to information on every single point of view on a topic? That could get very expensive. You might not be able to find materials on all points of view. Maybe something has been talked about but not necessarily published. So there are some considerations here and I think the important word here in my paraphrase is the should. That's an aspirational. This is what Libraries should do if in the best of all possible words or else we have the resources to do that and when it comes to making sure that you have points of view that you don't agree with, this is talking both for the user and for the librarian. When I was a reference librarian, I was responsible for buying books for the history and politics area of my library and I had a great trigger when I would be reading books about various political viewpoints. If it was something that made my gut churn, I would buy it instantly because I knew that I was probably likely buying all sorts of stuff that I agreed with and I wanted to make sure that I had various viewpoints in the collection. Likewise, when users are looking at what we have available in our libraries, of course, they want to see their points of view represented but they have to understand that they will not agree with everything that's in our library. If we are offending everybody, then we're doing a good job. The next point, censorship is bad. It's very bad and we should work together to fight it. So it's one of the cornerstones of the Library Bill of Rights is that we do not believe in censoring information. This is where a lot of the arguments against filtering come from but you can look in the news today and I'm certain that you can find a report about a book being challenged or removed from the school library or concerns being raised about books in a public library. Name the topic, name the area, something will pop up. We should work together to fight it piece. We are called in the Library Bill of Rights to work with like-minded groups and so while librarians do a lot of activities in this area, we might hook up with say the National Coalition Against Censorship or the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the ACLU and we have partnerships working with these groups when there are censorship threats. So that's something that we are called to do. The next one, everyone should be able to use the library. If you don't know what everyone means, you could look in the dictionary, you could refer a user to a dictionary to see what everyone means but the point of this is that everyone has, should have the right to access information through your library. This part of the Library Bill of Rights has come under some scrutiny because it doesn't include the whole laundry list of different categories that have faced discrimination or have been marginalized throughout the years and the language that's in there now, the argument is that it's broad enough to try to cover everything and there are as you'll see at the bottom of the slide, there are other interpretations that get into some of the nitty gritties so that as we have better understanding of some of the issues that different groups face, then we can talk more specifically about those issues. When I was on the Intellectual Freedom Committee, one of the new interpretations that we drafted was talking about services to people with disabilities and some of the special challenges and barriers that they face that need to be broken down in order to give them full access and equitable access to what we have. So the reason that the Library Bill of Rights has not been updated to include all of those different groups, the rationale that has been given to me is that there are a lot of libraries out there who have adopted the Library Bill of Rights as a policy statement, perhaps when it was less controversial to do so. And now there are some libraries who really have concerns that they would not be able to adopt the Library Bill of Rights as a policy statement today. And so if we were to update it, the core document, they would then have to re-adopt it. And instead, we would rather take the opportunity to talk about more contemporary issues and use the interpretation model to bring those up to date and still give the libraries the opportunity to hold on to the Bill of Rights as a policy statement. I'll talk a little bit more about the interpretations in just a minute. All right, the final chunk that's in here is about meeting rooms and exhibit spaces, and yes, they should be open to everyone if they're open to anyone. And so that means that if you do make your public rooms available, if you make your exhibit spaces available to the public, then you have to make it available to the public. Refer back one bullet point to the everyone part, okay? And yeah, it's a little random and specific to be included in the major concepts of the Library Bill of Rights. If you know the history of the document, it came from a public library in Iowa, and that was something that was included in their original version. And so when ALA adopted a similar version for the entire association to consider, that part stayed in there. But it still does make sense if we're talking about access to information and access to the resources of the library, including the meeting rooms and the exhibit spaces makes a lot of sense. So finally, the different interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights, I gave you a little background on why we have them. And it's a mechanism to be able to explore items in greater detail and perhaps give a little bit more specific guidance to librarians and to libraries and to trustees and to boards of directors, as they consider policy statements. When you have a document like the Library Bill of Rights, it's fairly succinct and you want to keep it that way. If you get into too much detail, then you can lose some of the power of the language. And you might want to think about how you compare, I don't know, the Constitution to all of our laws that explain the principles that are laid out there. And so interpretations can help spell things out and also can be revised. It's a fairly in-depth process when we do the revisions, but they can be revised on a regular basis to make sure that they are up to date and are supporting librarians. The whole point of having these policies in place and having the policy interpretations in place is to give librarians arguments to help support the choices that they're making and also to provide some guidance. We believe, speaking as a member of the intellectual freedom community, that these are the principles that we should be pursuing in all of our libraries, that we should be supporting in all of our libraries. So that's my quick and dirty overview of the Library Bill of Rights. The next policy statement that I want to talk about is the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association. It's the same vintage as the Library Bill of Rights. Technically, it's just a little bit older. It was adopted at the very end of December 1938, but they decided to give it a 1939 year just to make it clean. So anyway, it was last revised in 2008. I'll tell you which articles are revised when we get to it, but there are eight articles. Major concepts are covered up here. So the first one is to promote service and access. That's the primary focus of our profession, that we have an ethical obligation to promote service to our users and to promote access. Number two, don't censor. This should sound familiar because we just saw it on the previous side talking about the Library Bill of Rights. So we, as librarians, do not want to censor. Number three, we respect privacy. Privacy is an important concept to being able to explore difficult topics. And so therefore, we want to make sure that our patrons, our users feel comfortable in having questions about something that could be sensitive, that they can trust us that if they're gonna check out information, we're not going to share that unless we have to. Number four, respecting copyright and balance. Balance is the reason that we revised the Code of Ethics back in 2008. The original statement, the statement before 2008 said something along the lines of we respect intellectual property rights. And there were a lot of folks who felt that that put too much emphasis on the copyright holder. And in fact, librarians had an ethical obligation to fight for the rights of users under fair use, under exemptions of the Copyright Act to make sure that people could use the information that is out there in the public, even when it's copyrighted. And so the balance phrase was put in there to say that we respect copyright law, but we also want to advocate for balance on the rights for the user. So that's where that change came through. Number five, be nice to each other. We actually have it in our Code of Ethics that librarians should treat each other with respect. And so it's not an uncommon thing to see in professional codes of ethics, but I think it is important to note that everyone thinks librarians are these nice, warm and fuzzy people. And we are, but we still need to make sure that we believe in treating each other well and treating each other respectfully when we differ on all sorts of opinions. No private interests. So this article number six in the Code really comes down to making sure that I don't have any play in the game if there's something coming up. I'm the dean of a library and I can sign contracts for who we're gonna do business with. And if I have a cousin who happens to run a painting business and I give him preferential treatment so that he can get that bid, that would be a private interest that would be a no-no. So that's pretty clear. Number seven, no private agendas. Librarians should not bring their own personal beliefs into the workplace and use them to inform the programs to shape the collections of what we do. And so certainly we all have our right to our own opinions, but they don't have a place in the workplace. They shouldn't impact. They shouldn't affect what we do because our users expect us to be neutral. And then the final thing is that we need to keep learning. It's an ethical obligation that we should keep learning about information, about the latest developments in our profession and that if we are not learning and growing, we're not gonna be serving our users as well. Unlike the Library Bill of Rights, it has 25 interpretations. The Code of Ethics has just one and that first one was issued to talk more about copyright. Because of the change in 2008, that raised some questions and I happen to be chair of the Committee on Professional Ethics when we developed the copyright interpretation and part of it was to give some stronger language saying that we really feel that the balance is out of whack here and that there are some ethical imperatives for librarians to be aware of when it comes to promoting our rights under copyright. Before I move on from this, I wanna talk about the audiences of the two different groups. So when we have the Library Bill of Rights, a lot of this is written for the public, but it's also to tell librarians what we believe. I would say in this case, I would classify that the Library Bill of Rights has our users as the primary audience with librarians as a secondary audience. For the Code of Ethics, the primary audience would be librarians and people who work in the library field and the language talks about how we do this and we don't do this and so it's really us claiming the things that we believe in and it still has a secondary audience of our users because they need to know what is important to us so that they don't think that we're coming out of left field when we talk about why we care about privacy. So those are public documents. They have two slightly separate audiences. The other connection that I wanna make here is that if we think about the principles, that would be the Library Bill of Rights and so again, you've got some principles that are laid out here on the screen that say this is what we believe in as a profession. When it comes to the ethical side of things, it's putting those principles into action. So if we say that censorship is bad, then we don't censor, okay? So that's kind of that connection. I always see ethics as the application of those principles that we need to know what we believe first and then how do we actually put them into practice? So some of the trends that I've been thinking about right now, digital content is a big one. I know that at my library, we are shifting more and more of our budget into getting content, streaming content, getting online resources that we can make available outside of our building and that's a big issue because we're no longer purchasing it. We don't have the same rights to it when we license it that stuff can just disappear. And so that brings up some issues while a lot of our users really appreciate the digital content, especially users who can't come into the library. We are more restricted. We can't share information as much through say interlibrary loan when it's something that we don't own unless we fight for those rights in the licensing. And the more that we invest in digital content, the more that we are kind of forcing our users to make sure they have access to the devices to use that content. So while we hopefully have a commitment in our libraries to provide that access here, you're still putting an extra burden on the folks who can't afford either the device at home or the fast internet connection or perhaps even any internet connection at home where they may need to come in and use the resources. And so while they do have access that may not be as equitable as if we had a format that doesn't require all the gear. Diversity continues to be a concern both in many ways. So there is an interpretation on the Library Bill of Rights about diversity of collections. We also talked about how everyone should have the right to use the library. So we still see on a regular basis concerns that collections don't necessarily show everything or have everything that we would like them to see. There are various efforts to try to make the collections more representative of the people who are using them. And that's where it connects into the community piece. There are some communities that may be more visible in terms of who you know that you're serving and there may be some communities that are not as visible. And so you might have elements of diversity that you need to be mindful of and make sure that you are serving them, whether it's with resources or with programming. And I think if you ever find yourself falling into a place where you say, you know, I am not, we don't have those people here, then you might want to do a little bit of a check. Also with the profession, we have a lot of efforts that are trying to make our profession look more like the people that we serve. We've been doing this for decades and we're still having some challenges bringing people in. So that's something else to be thinking about. Internet filtering, it's been around for a long time. And while it's not quite as bad as the days where you couldn't search for recipes on using chicken breasts or find information on breast cancer because it used the B word, it's still not great. Things slip through and things still get blocked. So it's still an issue that we're contending with. User created content. So libraries are opening maker spaces. Libraries are having catalogs and blogs and other interactive web content where users can post reviews, where they can post comments. And so while we have been pretty clear about trying to be open to the things that we would bring into our collections and into our services, that's always been with that caveat of, well, we're professionals. We know what to bring in. We know what sort of information would be a good use of our resources. And so when we invite the public to start creating content, we have to start thinking about what that means in terms of free expression about community values, community support. And there's a lot of issues that come up with that. Privacy is still a concern. I think it's the control of privacy that's really the big issue that a lot of people think about. We realize that a lot of information is just out there, but we want to be able to control who has access to that. It's still an evolving topic. Service models is the last thing that I would bring up. You have libraries that were designed in areas before the computers even existed. You have libraries that were renovated at a time when making sure everyone had a network check was the most important thing. You had heavy physical presence of people of librarians and staff behind desks serving people. There's a lot to be said for the great values of having that personal contact. Is it something that we should continue to do? I think that service models will continue to evolve. So let's come back. Now that we've talked about some of our core principles and how we might want to apply them, let's revisit these dilemmas. So in this first one where we're talking about a ninth grader in a public library who is having problems with the filter. In terms of what I would do, I would say that this is a legitimate research concern. And so as a staff member, I would unblock the filter and remain with the student doing the research to help them find the information that they're looking for. But I would also look to see what else we have in our collections because if they're just searching on Google for information, this is an educational opportunity to say, hey, we've got a book on white supremacist groups and here's some articles from our databases that could also be useful. And so you can take this opportunity to see what else is available. But if push comes to shove and you can't find that information in your resources, then unblock the filter for that situation. That's what I would do. The next one, this gets a little tricky when we're talking about parental rights to the elementary school library records. In this case, there is a federal law FERPA, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act that does guarantee some parental access to their children's records. And so in this case, you would need to provide that information. You may have state laws that talk about what you can and cannot reveal, but a federal law like FERPA would trump that. That part about student doing a book on alcoholic parents, it's a bit of a red herring because it really doesn't matter what they're looking at when it comes to the law. You would want to make sure that you're following your policy in this case. If you are concerned that there might be an issue here with the family, there are other mechanisms, talk to the teachers, talk to the guidance counselor and see if there are other signs that there might need to be an intervention, but that's more of a school responsibility and that really shouldn't have anything to do with your decision to release the information. The next dilemma. So all sorts of nifty things you can do with your web browser system. And there has been increasing requests from law enforcement over the last couple of years and they will continue on into the future about tracking criminal activity, illegal activity through the internet. And so when you come to this question, for me, I would say that the main point is what's the purpose of keeping this information? It should be to improve library services. And so if we want to see the average length of time that someone is sitting down and using a computer so that we can try to balance the availability of computers or make the case to get more computers or to adjust the settings and how long the reservations can be, that's great. That helps the library have a better sense of what they're doing. So that's good information to capture, but you don't need to know who it is. So sure, you know, watch the logs and see how often people are using things, but you don't necessarily need to track it. As for recording the sites that patrons visit, while it could help you with some collection development choices that you're trying to see what information they're looking for, you could make the argument for that. But again, the more information that you collect that's not directly related to making the library services better, the more information that you then have to protect to make sure that someone doesn't hack it and take that information. And again, someone just because they're looking for information on a topic doesn't mean that they're going to pursue that topic. So I would hesitate to turn any of this on other than to look at the trends to make policy decisions. Okay, R-rated movies with a 16-year-old. Here's the big issue. If you're not aware already, movie ratings come from a private organization and public institutions cannot adopt private rating systems to govern access. And so whether it's the MPAA or if it's the board that oversees games or ratings on any sorts of outside rating systems, we cannot adopt them as public institutions, publicly funded institutions. And so there should not be restrictions on checking information out based on ratings. Now, some libraries approach this by just not getting any R-rated movies. I have a concern about that personally because that means that you are holding the entire community down to the level of 13-year-olds. So something to consider. All right, the final one, talking about professors who wants to know what their students have checked out. And so this is another privacy issue. There are other methods that you could help the professor do some investigation. If the professor says, well, why do you think they plagiarized this work? It doesn't look like they're writing. Well, you can compare previous writing samples to make the case. You could be, you can take that information and it's really easy to throw a lot of stuff just into Google or your favorite search engine and find those chunks of text and pull it up that way. So in this case, I would offer the professor assistance in researching the information that they think has been plagiarized, but I would not release the information from those student records. Okay, so a couple questions that I would invite you to consider as you're thinking about all of this and tying it back to information communities. Are there different ethics for different information communities? And one thing to ponder is the different types of codes of ethics that are out there and how they are the same and how they might be different. So that's something to consider. Are there principles that are common to all communities? And again, you might want to look at as you're comparing different information communities, look to see what they have in common, and I'm pretty sure you could probably find some principles, but I'd be curious to see what you come up with. How do you know what ethics guide your community? How do you find out what people care about, what the approach is to difficult topics, even simple topics? How do you know what your community thinks about ethics? And finally, can your ethics change over time? What would your process look like? So we do see changes in social values and beliefs over time and so that would have an impact on ethics. Again, if you think of ethics as the acting out on your principles, so how would that change the ethical universe in your community? All right, so to close up here, just a couple of tips when you're thinking about ethical issues. Being ethically fit, this is a concept that comes from a book by Rushworth Kitter called How Good People Make Tough Choices. And practicing the solving of ethical dilemmas is one of the best ways to be prepared to handle them and that's why I like to introduce dilemmas to talk about. So talk about this with your colleagues when you're in an organization, ask to have regular times to talk about the challenges that have come up and how you would resolve them so that you can stay on point. Knowing the principles behind the policies and so your policies that are at your organizations really just are another expression of the principles. So if you have a collection development policy at your library, it's because you care about diversity in your collections. You care about not censoring. You care about having a wide range of materials available and so to know those principles behind the policies helps you explain it when a question might come up. Educating. You might see, educate who? You have to educate everybody. You need to educate yourself and you need to educate on the latest issues. You need to educate your colleagues to make sure that they know why we do things the way we do. You need to educate your users so they understand where we're coming from. Think again about the public audience, the library bill of rights, and you need to educate your administrators and your decision makers so that they understand why we do things the way that we do. The fourth one, you know, sometimes there are fights that may be the absolute right thing to do and have consequences that are damaging to your organization. And so there may be sometimes where you have to find a solution that might not be the first one you would choose but would resolve the issue and let you live to fight another day. And so remember all the way back to those aspirational documents when we talk about how libraries should have everything. Well, they're not going to, but they should strive for that. They are going to strive to make the best decision every single time. And sometimes you're going to have to settle for something else and that's okay. Finally, I want to give a shout out to my friends and colleagues at the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association. When it comes to ethics and intellectual freedom, they are a great resource and can provide guidance on questions that you might have on policies if you're not sure, how to handle a situation. If you're looking to educate yourself, they've got lots of great resources. So go to their website and you can find what you need to be able to solve every problem guaranteed. So that is all I have for this session. I want to thank you for inviting me to be part of this. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. There's my email address and I am glad to have been part of this. Thank you very much.