[78] in Information Retrieval
Ethics of Digital Librarianship
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sao@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Thu Mar 19 13:22:12 1992
From: sao@Athena.MIT.EDU
To: elibdev@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 92 13:19:47 EST
I've just received a fairly lengthy essay on "Ethics of Digital
Librarianship" from Brewster Kahle of Thinking Machines. I've enclosed
a couple of snippets below, and I've put the full text into the "ir"
discuss meeting for those who are interested in reading it. The
author discusses privacy issues raised by electronic libraries, and
uses WAIS as a specific case study.
If you don't have access to the discuss meeting, send me mail and I'll
mail you a copy of the essay.
:Andy Oakland
sao@athena.mit.edu
------------------------------
As more of us become involved in serving information electronically
to other users, we so-called "digital librarians" must become
conscious of our ethical responsibilities to protect the privacy of
our the users being served.
[...]
I operate the directory of servers in the WAIS
system, and as such, I know what users are requesting access to what
what type of servers. I know, for instance, every time Mitch Kapor
uses the system, and what he asks for (he specifically allowed me to
include his name here).
[...]
Often people
say "I have nothing to hide," which may be true, but if a stranger
approaches on the street and knows quite a bit of personal
information, then the innocent will likely take that person more
seriously than if a cold stranger approached. Even with nothing to
hide, most people feel they should who knows what about them. The
personal nature of information access makes distributing collected
questions a bit unnerving.
