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 Daily Beast’s Emily Brill criticizes Jonathan Zittrain for publishing an op-ed critical of Apple, without specific disclosure of the fact that his academic home, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, receives funding from some of Apple’s competitors, such as Google and Microsoft.

Brill seems determined to explore (and accuse) whether Zittrain — and the Berkman Center generally — succumbs to the pressures of funding sources in forming research conclusions and policy opinions.

Of course he doesn’t.

Recently I’ve found myself absorbed in various issues surrounding Internet research ethics: the Tastes, Ties, and Time Facebook data release, Pete Warden’s plans to release a database of public Facebook information on 215 million users, etc. To help work through some of these issues — and assist others who are much more qualified than I to figure them out — I’ve been lucky to join Elizabeth Buchanan and Charles Ess on their NSF-funded project to launch the Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Resource Center, and Commons.
Complementing this new research …

Anthony Hoffmann, a UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies PhD student, has posted an excellent analysis of the Twitter-Library of Congress deal, in 4 parts, at his blog Sex, Drugs & Intellectual Freedom:

Part I: Intro and Privacy Roundup: Hoffmann discusses how the LoC acquisition of the public Twitter archive “directly confronts a number of unresolved (and hotly contested) practical and conceptual issues concerning privacy today”.
Part II: Digital Divides and the Cultural Record: Hoffmann critiques the oft-repeated rhetoric that the Twitter archive represents the collective thoughts and utterances of “ordinary people”, …

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 …

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 …

This weekend I’m attending the 4th Access to Knowledge conference, A2K4: Access to Knowledge and Human Rights, hosted by the Yale Information Society Project (see my original post on the conference here).

With the help of the UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies, I organized a workshop on “Identifying Challenges and Opportunities foran African Information Ethics”, featuring Johannes Britz (School of Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee), Rafael Capurro (International Center for Information Ethics, and School of Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee) and Dennis Ocholla (University of Zululand), along with a very engaged group of conference participants.

Speaking of the research ethics related to automatically harvesting public social networking data, we are confronted this week with the story of Pete Warden, a former Apple engineer who has spent the last six months harvesting and analyzing data from some 215 million public Facebook profile pages.
According to Warden, he exploited a flaw in Facebook’s architecture to access public profiles without needing to be signed in to a Facebook account, effectively avoiding being bound by Facebook’s Terms of Service preventing such automated harvesting of data. As a result, he amassed …

While participating in the workshop on Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research, the question arose as to whether it was ethical for researchers to follow and systematically capture public Twitter streams without first obtaining specific, informed consent by the subjects. Many in the room felt that consent was not necessary since the tweets are public, a conscious choice made by the user to allow the whole world see her activity. In short, by not restricting …

I’m currently in Savannah, GA to participate in a workshop on Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research at CSCW 2010.
This is my first time at CSCW, and looking at the set of papers for this workshop, it should be an excellent experience. I’ve submitted a brief analysis of the “Tastes, Ties, and Time” Facebook dataset release (my larger paper is going through its final edits for publication). You can download the short analysis here: Subject Privacy and the Release of the “Tastes, …

The Yale Information Society Project has announced the 4th Access to Knowledge conference: A2K4: Access to Knowledge and Human Rights. The event will be held at Yale Law School on February 12-13, 2010, hosted by the Information Society Project, in collaboration with an extensive list of organizing partners, including UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies.
The two-day conference will feature plenary panels as well as breakout sessions of working groups organized around specific issue areas, including a workshop I have organized on “Identifying Challenges and Opportunities for an African Information Ethics”.

On Tuesday, a group of librarians and information professions will be holding a panel discussion on “The Challenges of Implementing Library 2.0 Services” at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T).
On the Challenges of Implementing Library 2.0 Services
ASIS&T 2009 Annual Meeting
Tuesday, Nov. 10, 3:30pm PST
Today, many libraries are at a crossroads: several of the services they have traditionally provided within their walls are increasingly made available online, often by non-library, commercial entities. For example, Web search engines provide easy access to millions of …

I’m pleased to announce that Dr. Rafael Capurro, an international expert in information ethics, is joining the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Information Studies as a Distinguished Researcher. Dr. Capurro’s focus on intercultural information ethics — as well as his sense of humor — will be a welcome addition to our growing team of researchers.
From the press release:
As founder and director of the International Center for Information Ethics, Dr. Capurro is world-renowned for his work in ethics and information policy. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from Düsseldorf University, a …

On the heels of Open Access Day at UW-Milwaukee, held as part of the first international Open Access Week, it was announced that the UWM Libraries has successfully negotiated a contract with the Elsevier publishing company that will provide increased access to scholarly journals and reduce costs to UWM.
From the announcement sent by Rita Cheng, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs:
Library patrons will have access to ScienceDirect, a database providing access to 2,000 full text peer-reviewed journals, with content going back to 1995, published by Elsevier and its partners.   …