This fall 2011 issue of JIE presents the words of nine writers who each prompt us to explore our understandings, assumptions, and presumptions about the field of information ethics. Advocacy is a term that surfaces in many of the contributions. The body of work presented raises questions about library and information (and related) rhetoric, practice, activism, and neglect. The scholarship begins with the musing of an information ethics pioneer, Dr. Martha M. Smith, in which she looks back to the early years of information ethics from the perspective of her new career as a hospice chaplain in the USA. Marti also discusses several IE models she developed and her first education in biblical studies and ministry, offers thanks to those people who influenced her work, and makes suggestions for future areas of inquiry. The journal issue closes with a thought piece by a next generation, equally formidable information ethicist, Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan, who encourages and invites new and critical contributors to the field in her role as Director of the newly minted Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Between these two remarkable contemplations are nestled a series of short to long essays in which some authors set their sights on information ethics more or less squarely; one contributor, in part, writes off information ethics; several others come at it quite unconsciously. A short introduction to each article is presented below.From Canada, a well traveled and new member of the library profession, Jane Robertson Zaiane, analyzes ten current English-language codes of ethics published by national library associations in the context of information ethics in library and information science. Jane identifies select elements of each iden- tified as significant in an ethics code representing a national professional organization, including human rights, intellectual freedom, technology, privacy, definitions, and professional development. She brings to light the relevance of cultural context, professional intent, breadth of interpretation, necessity, and function with regard to ideal ethics as illustrated in these library statements. Of note, nine of the codes seemingly base the moral and ethical statements on humanist and philosophical ideals, while Indonesia's code appears in phrasing, purpose, and character to be guided by nationalist ideals. Jane's work makes a strong case for the value of intercultural and global understanding in the task of information ethics scholarship more broadly. Moving forward into the everyday ethics of language use, from the United States, academic librarian Emily Drabinski draws on contact zone theory and work on language equity in composition studies to advocate a reorientation of library instruction away from teaching the specifics of library language and toward teaching library research as a process of struggle and translation at the site of the database search interface. As promoters of equitable access to information, she asserts, information literacy instructors should learn to invite users into our discourse without the additional requirement that they dump their own discursive realities at our classroom doors.Because Emily's work delves into knowledge organization and the power of naming responsibly it bridges naturally to fellow American academic librarian K.R. Roberto's subversive ethics treatment of how traditional library cataloging models and hierarchical taxonomic and classification structures are used to describe bits of information. Such schemas, he suggests, lack methods to acknowledge people's sometimes vague and often flexible identities. K.R.'s article specifically treats Library of Congress-based cataloging practices, including classification, and their role in putting into effect normative boundaries for queer sexualities and gender. K.R. concludes that through the use of inaccurate language in the Library of Congress Subject Headings and problematic classification schemes, library catalogers often unsuspectingly play a role in the production of library environments that are passively unfavorable to transgender users. …
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Dec 27, 2018
Elena Lindeman + 2
Open Access
