Michael Zimmer.org

I have been charged with convening a panel for the Information Ethics special interest group of ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education), to be held at its 2011 annual conference.
I’ve decided to focus on how LIS scholars and professionals need to place renewed focus on providing information ethics education across various contexts. We must move beyond just implementing information ethics within LIS curricula, and find innovative ways to incorporate it into elementary and secondary schools, public & school libraries, homes and community centers, as well as within popular …

On Wednesday, July 21, 2010, I will be presenting in front of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), part of the Office for Human Research Protections in the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). My presentation will focus on how Web 2.0 tools, environments, and experiences are creating new conceptual gaps in our understanding of privacy, anonymity/identifiability, consent, and harm.

The School of Information Studies and the Center for Information Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee announces the addition of Wilhelm Peekhaus as a postdoctoral fellow in information policy.

Registration is now open for Internet Research 11.0: Sustainability, Participation, Action, the 2010 conference for the Association of Internet Researchers, taking place October 21-23 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

And, if you’re a student looking for ways to defray some of the costs, the UW-Milwaukee Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) will again sponsor a student (undergraduate, graduate or post-doc) for the conference in the amount of US$800.

I’m thrilled to announce that the School of Information Studies and the Center for Information Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will be hosting the 2011 Computer Ethics/Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) conference, May 31 to June 3, 2011. The bi-annual conference is presented by the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology (INSEIT), and this will my 4th time participating in CEPE (2005, 2007, 2009).
For 2011, the conference theme is “Crossing Boundaries: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Relations”. The full call for papers is below.
Call for …

As part of the strategic process of changing the name of the UW-M School of Information Studies undergraduate program from a B.S. in Information Resources to a B.S. in Information Science & Technology, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about marketing messages to best communicate what our major is, what value our graduate add, and how we can be differentiated from other programs (such as computer science or MIS).
One thing I try to instill on my students is how the role of an information professional is to …

This year, I am the interim director of the undergraduate program at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. While the School’s largest program is the MLIS degree, our bachelor of science degree has been growing, improving, and gaining attention at a steady rate over the past few years. The degree trains students in the theory and practical aspects of information science and information systems, and prepares graduates …

I’m pleased to announce that the School of Information Studies and the Center for Information Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are accepting applications for a postdoctoral fellow in information policy. We are targeting to select someone to join us in August 2010, so timing is tight. Application deadline is April 30. Details below, and feel free to email me with questions.

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Information Policy
School of Information Studies
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is accepting applications …

Please join us for the UW-Milwaukee Center for International Education’s 2010 conference, “Law and Disciplinarity: Thinking Beyond Borders,” which will take place on April 23-24 at UWM’s Hefter Conference Center. Registration is free and open to the public.
Law and Disciplinarity: Thinking Beyond Borders
Hefter Conference Center
3271 N. Lake Drive
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
April 23-24 2010
In the twenty-first century, traditional legal borders – geographic and intellectual – have been increasingly contested. Many observers have questioned whether the long-held conception of sovereign state boundary remains salient in a world of technology-accelerated trans-boundary flows of people, …

I have a summer research opportunity for an incoming UW-Milwaukee freshman interested in libraries, Web 2.0, and information ethics and policy.
The Office of Undergraduate Research is again sponsoring the UR@UWM Summer Research program. Selected students are invited to campus for four weeks during the summer (July 12-August 6) to engage in cutting edge research with leading UWM faculty. Students will spend 20-30 hours a week in their research mentors’ lab settings, as well as meet twice weekly with the other summer researchers for …

If you have an interest in information ethics, access to knowledge, capacity building, and the African continent, please join us for the “Teaching Information Ethics in Africa – Current Status, Opportunities, and Challenges” conference at the University of Botswana on September 6-7, 2010.
This event is the third of a series of conferences focusing on information ethics in Africa. The first, “African Information Ethics Conference: Ethical Challenges in the Information Age” convened in 2007, was the first ever African conference on information ethics. This was followed in 2009 by “The Workshop …

The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its eleventh competition for papers to be submitted for the 2010 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 22-27, 2010. (http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM10/am10cfp.html)
Building from the overall conference theme, the theme for this year’s paper contest is: “Navigating Streams in a Global Information Ecosystem“.
Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. Topics include, but are …

For those nearby, I’ll be the featured speaker at the Pub Politico gathering on Sunday, March 21, 2:00pm at Brocach Irish Pub in Madison, Wisconsin.
I’ll be speaking, informally, about “Failures in Self-Regulation in Online Privacy”, focusing on recent examples of how Google, Facebook, and other online companies continue to fall short in their attempts to protect user privacy, and whether/how the government should step in to provide additional protections for consumers of online services.
The gathering is co-sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, and is free and open …

From May 2 through May 8, 2010, libraries across the nation will celebrate Choose Privacy Week for the first time. This American Library Association campaign invites library professionals, users, and friends into a national conversation about privacy rights in a digital age. The UWM School of Information Studies and UWM Libraries have joined together to provide a venue for local librarians, information professionals, and patrons to discuss the emerging privacy and ethical challenges for libraries in the new “2.0” era, titled:
Emerging Privacy and Ethical Challenges for Libraries in the 2.0 …

Special Topics in Information Science – The Search Engine Society:

Search engines have become the center of gravity of our contemporary information society, providing a powerful interface for accessing the vast amount of information available on the World Wide Web and beyond. The audacious mission of Google, for example, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Attaining such a goal necessarily results in significant changes to the ways in which information is created, stored, retrieved, and used. This course will critically examine the nature of search engines and their role in our information society, and reveal the unique challenges they bring to bear on information institutions, information policy, and information ethics.