The Blackberry Project (formerly known as the Friendship Project) is an ongoing longitudinal study examining teen behavior and sociability, which first recruited its subjects in 2003 (starting with 281 third and fourth graders from 13 Dallas public schools) and relied on yearly laboratory and home observation and surveys for data collection. Then, in 2009, the subjects (now entering 8th grade) were provided with BlackBerry devices with unlimited text and data plans paid for by the investigators. The devices were configured so that the content of all text messages, e-mail messages, and instant messages was saved to a secure server to be mined by the researchers — over 500,000 messages a month are being archived. Preliminary analyses have been published in Developmental Psychology.

The result? Hill puts it best in her headline and opening thoughts:

A Texas University’s Mind-Boggling Database Of Teens’ Daily Text Messages, Emails, and IMs Over Four Years

For the past four years, the University of Texas-Dallas developmental psychology professor has essentially wire-tapped 175 Texas teens,  capturing every text message, email, photo, and IM sent on Blackberries that she provided to them, creating a rich database that now contains millions of funny, explicit, sexual, and inane messages for academic study. Half a million new messages pour into the database every month. This summer, she’s adding Facebook content to the mix as well. The teens sacrificed their privacy for science… and a free smartphone, data plan and unlimited text messaging.

Dr. Underwood’s study has been approved by UT-Dallas’s Institutional Review Board, and she’s also received a Certificate of Confidentiality from the NIH, which are only granted after considerable scrutiny. Each participant is given a unique identification number so that all information that is collected is, according to the project website, “de-personalized”. The research data is stored securely with the help of Ceryx and Global Relay, data security providers who typically work together to store and archive electronic communication data for financial institutions. The archive is password protected and can only be accessed by a small group of selected researchers.

In short, this large-scale and long-term project has undergone considerable review, and appears to be taking privacy and security quite seriously. That said, there remain certain ethical concerns about the research worth discussing.

(Note: my discussion is based on what I can glean from available reports and documents about the study; I’m trying to gather additional information through various channels.)

Consent

Since the Blackberry Project (and its predecessor) focus on studying the activity of minors, gaining informed consent is of particular importance. Participants and parents were required to sign detailed consent forms annual that clearly stated that all electronic communication were be recorded and monitored. (While the consent forms for the earlier Friendship Project are available online, I haven’t been able to locate the consent documents for the Blackberry Project. I’ll request them from Dr. Underwood.) It appears this consent process was repeated annually, which is particularly important as subjects grow and develop, and the content of their text and email messages might change over time (for example, 10th graders might start texting about dangerous or legal activity, which might not have been contemplated when original consent was provided years earlier).

Parental consent for minor subjects is standard procedure. However, I wonder how well a parent actually understands the extent to which adolescents make use of mobile texting, and whether a parent really is equipped to represent (and waive) the privacy interests of their adolescent kids if they fail to recognize both the scale and types of information contained within those text messages. Is parental consent really sufficient when we’re dealing with teenager’s use of social media and personal technology? This is something I’ll need to think about more….

Further, any consent granted only involves the participants themselves and their outgoing messages. But those sending messages to the participants have not consented to having their messages stored and subjected to analysis. Underwood recognizes this problem, but argues it away:

Pioneering researchers studying online communication have argued that electronic communication can be observed without permission in some contexts because the information need not be uniquely identifiable, unless individuals have chosen to make their online user name their actual name (see Subrahmanyam et al., 2006; Whitlock, Powers, & Eckenrode, 2006). In our study, although we did have access to participants’ phone contacts and could see how they labeled individuals there, these were rarely uniquely identifiable, because most adolescents chose to label contacts with first names only or with nicknames.

However, I find this argument a bit thin. Just because some “pioneering researchers” claim it is acceptable to study online messages observed without permission “in some contexts” doesn’t make it necessarily ethical here. Hopefully the IRB pressed hard on this issue.

Undue Influence

Consent is only valid if it doesn’t involve coercion or undue influence. While paying research subjects is commonplace and generally acceptable, the fact that subjects in the Blackberry Project received a free smartphone with fully paid data and texting plans (and a generous 300 minute voice plan) might quality as undue influence. The Office of Human Research Protections defines undue influence when researchers offer an “excessive or inappropriate reward or other overture in order to obtain compliance.” OHRP also notes that “The level of remuneration should not be so high as to cause a prospective subject to accept risks that he or she would not accept in the absence of the remuneration.”

This is where the free Blackberries and service plans might be problematic. Since 11% of the participating families had incomes under $25,000, and 29% under $50,000, the allure of a free, “highly attractive” smartphone, complete with a free and unlimited data plan, might have persuaded some lower-income families to participate who otherwise might have considered the project too risky. If you’re on a tight budget, and your kids keep pestering you for a smartphone, the Blackberry Project might have been a lifesaver, regardless of the risks.

Determining undue influence is a grey area, and, again, I hope that UT-Dallas’s IRB considered this matter with vigor.

Privacy and Anonymity

Underwood has taken great lengths to protect subject privacy, including the use of secure, off-campus data storage platforms and replacing account names with ID numbers within the archive. Yet, considerable privacy concerns remain. There are plenty of cases where simply replacing names with ID numbers fails to provide sufficient anonymity, and the content of the messages themselves might reveal various personal details of the participants and their friends. The researchers indicate they use the participants address books to help “replace phone numbers with whatever the participants used to label their contacts” when compiling transcripts. While some of these labels might be un-identifiable, others might effectively “out” particular people within the dataset.

The Forbes article also notes:

Underwood has gotten calls from investigators around the country who would love access to her database, but she says she doesn’t want to hand over the data unless she can de-identify it or anonymize it. I’m imagining many a privacy scholar shaking his or her head in dismay given how difficult true anonymization is.

Indeed. I’m curious to know what steps toward deidentification or anonymization Underwood intends before sharing the data.

The Forbes piece presses Underwood further about the issue of privacy:

When I asked Underwood if any of the kids (or their parents) had ever expressed concern about the privacy of their communications, and the discomfort they might feel about every single thing they send being archived indefinitely for study, she said it had been a “non-issue.”

“We haven’t really directly asked about it. We don’t do anything to draw attention to our monitoring,” says Underwood. She prefers that teenagers act naturally. Asking them too strongly about how they feel about their privacy might negatively affect the “observing them in the wild” aspect of her study.

This troubles me. Here, a researcher collecting millions of personal messages sent between teens admits to not wanting to directly address privacy with the subjects because it might negatively affect the study. If you bring up the privacy concern, Underwood seems to say, it will just cause them to self-censor. Of course, if her hypothesis is true, that validates the privacy concern itself — the participants might actually care about their privacy, once reminded about it. (Note to researchers: if you find yourself wanting to minimize disclosure of privacy concerns, then you have significant privacy concerns that need to be addressed.)

In sum, the Blackberry Project appears to have been managed properly through the IRB rules and regulations. These open issues speak more to the nature of this kind of research generally, versus about this project specifically. I’m very curious as to how the researchers and the IRB discussed and deliberated these issues, and will provide any updates if I’m able to gain access to more details.

ALA conducting new survey about librarians and privacy

For Immediate Release
Tue, 12/13/2011 – 15:50

Contact: Barbara Jones
Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF)

CHICAGO – The American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) is inviting librarians and library workers across the country to participate in a survey that will measure librarians’ attitudes about privacy rights and protecting library users’ privacy.

The survey is available online, and takes only 15 minutes to complete. All responses are anonymous and confidential:

http://tinyurl.com/ALAprivacysurvey

The survey, which builds on an earlier 2008 survey assessing librarians’ attitudes about privacy both within and outside of the library, will provide important data that will help ALA assess the state of privacy in the United States and help guide OIF’s planning for “Privacy for All,” ALA’s ongoing campaign to engage librarians in public education and advocacy to advance privacy rights.  The survey will be available until March 1, 2012.

The study is funded by a generous grant from the Open Society Institute and is managed by Dr. Michael Zimmer, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies and co-director of its Center for Information Policy Research.

Barbara Jones, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, encouraged all librarians and library workers to take the survey.  “After three successful years working on Choose Privacy Week and related educational programs, it is essential that we test our assumptions for the remaining years of the grant,” she said.  “We want ‘Privacy for All’ to create models for programming and services that librarians can use for various constituencies and community groups.  We can’t do that without your opinions.”

The “Privacy for All” initiative features Choose Privacy Week, an annual event that encourages libraries and librarians to engage library users in a conversation about privacy; and a website, privacyrevolution.org, that provides access to privacy-related news, information and programming resources.  In 2011 – 2012, “Privacy for All” and Choose Privacy Week will be focused on the topic of government surveillance, with an emphasis on immigrant and refugee communities’ use of libraries and youth attitudes about privacy.

Visit www.privacyrevolution.org to learn more about Choose Privacy Week and the resources available to help libraries engage their users in a conversation on privacy.

Ethics of Secrecy

Call for Papers for Vol. 17 (07/2012)

• Deadline for extended abstracts: January 15, 2012
• Notification of acceptance to authors: February 29, 2012
• Deadline for full articles: May 1, 2012
• Deadline for revised articles: June 15, 2012
• Publication: July 2012

The concept of “secrecy” is bound up in a variety of aspects of information ethics, sometimes in con-flicting ways: respecting personal privacy and opposing undue surveillance ensures a certain level of secrecy in one’s personal life and activities; to ensure security and public safety, government secrecy is often justifiable; open records laws and whistleblower protections are meant to limit government secrecy and promote transparency; corporate trade secrets remain secret to protect investments and economic growth; the secrecy of our personal lives is increasingly shattered – and commodified – through social media or, to paint a black picture: the personal freedom to conceal and reveal information and thus even the concept of personal identity might be at stake.

This special issue will explore the complex nature of “secrecy” in our contemporary information society. The ethical exploration of secrecy must be renewed in the face of the multiple and shifting social, political and cultural contexts in which information and people flow.

We welcome papers analyzing ethical problems of online social networks such as:

• Privacy, reputation, and the secrecy of personal information
• Tensions between secrecy and transparency
• Corporate secrecy and the ethics of whistleblowing
• The value of secrecy in a social information ecosystem
• The ethics of secrecy across cultures and societies
• Secrecy, transparency, privacy: moral principles of democracy?
• Government secrecy and the ethics of WikiLeaks
• Privacy and secrecy in ethical and sociological discussion
• The “interplay” between secrecy and mass/social media
• Privacy and secrecy in the discussion of communication science
• …

Guest Editors:

Daniel Nagel
Attorney
BRP Renaud & Partner
Stuttgart, Germany
daniel.nagel@brp.de

Prof. Dr. Matthias Rath
Director, Research Center Youth – Media – Education
University of Education Ludwigsburg, Germany
fjmb@ph-ludwigsburg.de

Michael Zimmer, PhD
School of Information Studies
Co-Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA
zimmerm@wum.edu

Submission guideline:

Potential authors are requested to submit an extended abstract (for details see http://www.i-r-i- e.net/about_irie.htm) by December 31, 2011. Abstracts may be submitted in the native language of the author though an English translation of this abstract must be included if the chosen language is not English. IRIE will publish articles in English, French, German, Portuguese or Spanish. The author(s) of contributions in French, Portuguese, or Spanish must nominate at least two potential peer reviewers.

Abstracts will be evaluated by the guest editors.

Deadline for the final article (usually ca. 3,000 words or 20,000 characters including blanks) is May 1, 2012. All final articles must conform to the IRIE style sheet. All full submissions will be subject to peer review. Therefore the acceptance of an extended abstract does not imply the publication of the final text, unless the article has passed the peer review and revisions (if required) have been included in the text.

All submissions should be sent by email with “IRIE-Secrecy Submission” in the header to Michael Zimmer: zimmerm@uwm.edu

On the opening morning of the conference, I will join John Palfrey and Lydia Shrier for a plenary panel on “Would Margaret Mead Have Blogged? How Social Media has Changed Research”. My slides for that presentation are provided below. I will also be leading a workshop on “Research, the Cloud, and the IRB”, and giving a presentation to the U.S. Department of Energy Human Subjects Working Group.

Internet research ethics is well represented at this year’s AER conference, with a strong track focusing on “Research Involving the Internet & Social Networking”. Among these presentations and workshops are several led by Elizabeth Buchanan. Buchanan will be co-facilitating a pre-conference workshop entitled “What a Tangled Web We Weave: Ethical, Regulatory, and technical Aspects of Internet Research”. She is also participating in the following workshops:  “Research, the Internet, and the IRB: Ethical and Regulatory Issues,” “Research, Social Media and the IRB,” and “Ethical Implications of Pre and Post Enrollment uses of Social Media in Clinical Trials”.

It is a well-written article, quite balanced, and features myself, the T3 principle researcher Jason Kaufman, and fellow Internet research experts Alex Halavais, Fred Stutzman, and Elizabeth Buchanan (I am friends with the latter three, for disclosure). The Chronicle also tracked down a Harvard student presumably within the dataset.

For those looking, my initial blog posts (from 2008) regarding the T3 dataset are here and here, and my full treatment of the dataset release was published here:

• Zimmer, M. (2010). “‘But the data is already public’: on the ethics of research in Facebook,” Ethics & Information Technology, 12(4), 313-325

I don’t want to rehash the entire article or episode, but would like to provide a few annotations:

The article does a nice job pointing out the dual challenges of “Researchers [who] must navigate the shifting privacy standards of social networks and their users”, as well as the “the committees set up to protect research subjects—institutional review boards, or IRB’s—[who] lack experience with Web-based research.”

These are critical revelations that we cannot take lightly. There is much work to be done to ensure researchers of all disciplines and levels recognize and respond to the complexities of engaging in this kind of research online, and that IRBs are sufficiently trained to recognize issues related to Internet research ethics.

To these ends, the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) has published an ethics guide (now undergoing revisions) as “as at least a starting point for their inquiries and reflection”, and we’ve held various workshops on the subject. Elizabeth Buchanan and Charles Ess have spearheaded important research on the IRBs’ awareness of Internet-related concerns, and have launched the Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Resource Center and Commons website as a valuable resource.

And, specific to the article’s mention that I have “pointed to the Harvard case in urging the federal government to do more to educate IRB’s about Web research”, I was privileged to present before 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). Joined by Elizabeth Buchanan, Montana Miller, and John Palfrey (of Harvard’s Berkman Center, by the way), we discussed emerging ethical issues with Internet-based research and urged the committee to take steps to ensure IRBs and researchers were suitably trained to recognize and address these important ethical issues.

In the context of this entire debate (and some of the original comments left on my blog posts), this passage from the article is quite telling:

But Mr. Kaufman talks openly about another controversial piece of his data gathering: Students were not informed of it. He discussed this with the institutional review board. Alerting students risked “frightening people unnecessarily,” he says.

“We all agreed that it was not necessary, either legally or ethically,” Mr. Kaufman says.

Frankly, I’m troubled by this statement. I will leave it to legal experts to determine if the research violated the consent requirements of the Federal Regulations for the Protection of Human Subjects (45 CFR 46), but from an ethical standpoint, I argue the researchers did have an obligation to respect the intentions of those students who might have restricted their Facebook profiles to only be visible to members of the Harvard community. The researcher’s own codebook acknowledged that the assistants used to access the profile data might have had preferential access to a profile, and that “a given student’s information should not be considered objectively ‘public’ or ‘private’”. This realization should have triggered an ethical concern over whether each students truly intended to have their profile data publicly visible and accessible for downloading.

This is the crux of the issue, and my earlier attempts to learn if and how this apparent waiver of the consent requirement was deliberated by Harvard’s IRB were unsuccessful. Perhaps now we can gain a bit more understanding of why it was deemed that consent wasn’t necessary (and I hope it was a more nuanced decision than simply avoiding “frightening people unnecessarily”).

I agree with the article’s conclusion that the “biggest victim” in this episode is academic scholarship.

The uniqueness of this dataset is of obvious value for sociologists and Internet researchers, and it wasn’t my goal to shut down this research project. It is unfortunate the researchers haven’t been able to find a suitable means of re-releasing the data, but just like the AOL search data release forced us to rethink methods of anonymization before again releasing large datasets of transaction logs, I’m hopeful that this episode can prompt meaningful consideration and debate of our understandings of privacy, anonymity/identifiability, consent, and harm when it comes to Internet-based research.

Finally, I wanted to provide a brief response to the implicit accusation made in the article that I’m a part of some kind of “academic paparazzi”.

I’m not even sure what this means. Perhaps someone thinks I spend my time trolling through other people’s research hoping to find a place where they slip up so I can have a “gotcha” moment? Hardly. I had never written on research ethics until I came across this particular case. I saw a passing mention of the data release on another scholar’s blog, and the ensuing discussion there about how the presumed anonymity of the dataset should be questioned due to its unique data variables. So I started to explore, and my discoveries followed. I’m not out to get anyone, but rather have taken quite a number of proactive steps to help researchers (both the T3 team and more broadly) address these complexities.

The complexities of research ethics and methodology in today’s Internet-based environment is complex, and I’m just starting to scratch the surface. But I don’t take this lightly; I’m a scholar, not a paparazzo.

As I conclude in my full article:

The purpose of this critical analysis of the T3 project is not to place blame or single out these researchers for condemnation, but to use it as a case study to help expose the emerging challenges of engaging in research within online social network settings. …The T3 research project might very well be ushering in ‘‘a new way of doing social science’’, but it is our responsibility scholars to ensure our research methods and processes remain rooted in long- standing ethical practices. Concerns over consent, privacy and anonymity do not disappear simply because subjects participate in online social networks; rather, they become even more important.

I hope that’s the takeaway from all this.

The School of Information Studies (SOIS) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) invites applications for a full-time tenure-track position in Information Studies at the rank of Assistant, Associate or Full Professor. The selected applicant will teach courses in the School’s graduate and, possibly, undergraduate programs. A PhD and MLIS (or comparable degree) are required as is demonstrated ability in research and teaching.

Applicants should have a strong background in information policy, including, but not limited to, ethical, cultural, technological or political issues as they relate to the information professions, systems, and infrastructures that make up our global information society.

Experience or demonstrated ability in design and delivery of courses in a variety of formats, including distance learning modes, is highly desirable. The Applicant should demonstrate the ability to teach in at least one of the core areas in the SOIS MLIS program and advanced graduate elective courses in her/his areas of expertise. Opportunities will also be available to teach in the School’s Bachelor of Science program in Information Science and Technology. The Applicant should be willing to work closely with doctoral students and to serve on dissertation committees. Experienced researcher a plus. Applicants who are eligible for a senior level appointment are especially encouraged to apply.

The preferred expected start date is January, 2012, and no later than August 2012.

For full details and to apply, visit the official posting here (position #2730).

My contribution to the discussion focuses on identifying some of the unique ethical dilemmas that youth face in their information-based environments, and how some of our current literacy standards help address some of those issues. More importantly, I suggest four new strategies to help achieve ethical literacy in youth:

• Talking and listening to youth
  • Discover their unique perspectives on privacy, property, information sharing & exchange
  • Need to shape ethical lessons & examples accordingly
• Ensure ethics are integrated into all literacy-related educational activities
  • Specifically address ethical questions related to each learning outcome
  • Add ethical components to computer literacy courses, information literacy sessions, special projects
• Reach youth through information technology
  • Engage the technology, don’t build fear of it
  • Create ways to teach ethics through the active use of Facebook, Wikipedia
• Turn all information interactions into “ethical teaching moments”
  • Game nights could include discussion of cheating
  • YouTube video contests could address copyright
  • Searching Google can present lessons on bias, free speech, censorship

The slides framing my contribution can be accessed below. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

As Ars Technica summarizes:

[At] the urging of Wisconsin’s state telecommunications association, Republican legislators have introduced an omnibus bill that would sever WiscNet from the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Division of Informational Technology, and bar it from taking any money from UW.

The proposed law even goes so far as to prohibit UW from taking National Telecommunications Information Agency (NTIA) broadband stimulus grants, or joining any entity that offers broadband to the general public.

These measures would force UW to return an estimated $39 million in such funds to Washington, DC, warned Tony Evers, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, last week. And they would force schools to turn to Badgernet, Wisconsin’s state wide-area-network, which depends heavily on AT&T as its primary vendor.

Today, individual members of the UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies community has joined the chorus of voices speaking out against this bill. A PDF of the letter is here, and the full text is below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Michael Zimmer, michael.zimmer@gmail.com

Dear members of the State Legislature:

As library and information science students, scholars, professionals, and educators, we are dedicated to maximizing and defending people’s free access to information and knowledge. Given this professional and ethical obligation, the undersigned individual members of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Information Studies community urge the removal of sections 23-26 in the currently pending UW System Budget Bill.

Advanced and affordable broadband Internet networking is critical to the success of students, researchers and industry statewide. Services such as WISCNET, and related consortial connectivity projects like Internet2 and EDUCAUSE, provide vital access to information for libraries, schools, historical societies, museums, hospitals and local municipalities across Wisconsin.

The “telecommunications” section of the legislation as proposed would severely limit broadband connectivity throughout the state of Wisconsin and would cut the networked information services various libraries and educational institutions provide to the citizens of the state of Wisconsin, such as Internet access, networking and collaboration, and online education and job training. It would also prohibit the UW System from being a member of Internet2 and other nonprofit consortia focusing on connectivity and information exchange, severely limiting state educators, researchers, and learners’ ability to participate in global, national and regional research and learning development in areas from Alzheimer’s prevention to astrophysics to child development.

The passage of sections 23-26 of the UW System Budget Bill would be devastating to the State. The undersigned individual members of the UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies community strongly urge the legislature to remove these sections form the bill, and to support WISCNET and other connectivity initiatives that provide vital access to information in support of the State’s educational and economic development.

Signed,

(Signees are writing in their personal capacity, not as representatives of UW-Milwaukee or the School of Information Studies. Titles and affiliations are for identification purposes only, and imply no institutional endorsements.)

• Liza Barry-Kessler, Doctoral Student
• Edward Benoit III, Doctoral Student
• Katie Blank, Assoc. Special Librarian
• Dave Bloom, Researcher
• Raina Bloom, Lecturer
• Amy Cooper Cary, Director, Archival Studies Program
• Karen Davies, Assistant Professor
• Alexandra Dimitroff, Associate Professor
• Melodie Fox, Doctoral Student
• Thomas Haigh, Associate Professor
• Rebecca Hall, Web Development & Marketing Coordinator
• Catherine Hansen, Lecturer & Director, Professional Development Institute
• Anthony Hoffmann, Doctoral Student
• Adam Hudson, Lecturer
• Jessica Hutchings, Graduate Advisor
• Dick Kawooya, Senior Lecturer
• Margaret Kipp, Assistant Professor
• Sharon Lake, Graduate Advisor
• Joyce M. Latham, Assistant Professor, Co-Director, Center for Information Policy Research, Coordinator, Public Library Leadership Program
• Peter J Lor, Visiting Professor
• Marta Magnuson, Doctoral Student
• Jeremy Mauger, Doctoral Student
• Steven Miller, Senior Lecturer
• Robert Nunez, Web Developer & Graduate Student
• Wihelm Peekhaus, Post-doctoral Research Associate
• Nick Proferes, Doctoral Student
• Angela Sadowsky, Undergraduate Advisor
• Betsy Schoeller, Lecturer & Distance Education Coordinator
• Jim Schultz, Information Technology Specialist & Graduate Student
• James Sweetland, Professor Emeritus
• Gabriella Tato, Marketing Media Assistant
• Thomas D. Walker, Associate Professor
• Mary Wepking, Senior Lecturer & School Library Media Coordinator
• Bonnie Withers, Lecturer
• Iris Xie, Professor
• Chad Zahrt, Assistant Dean
• Michael Zimmer, Assistant Professor & Co-Director, Center for Information Policy Research

 

 

I presented a paper co-written with three of my esteemed colleagues, Johannes Britz, Peter Lor, and Shana Ponelis, titled “From Codification to Actualization: Applying Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach to an Information-Based Rights Framework.” In this work-in-progress, we use Sen’s capability approach to reveal how personal, social, and environmental factors shape individuals’ capabilities to capitalize on their access to information and knowledge, and conclude by suggesting that information rights advocates must turn their focus from simply promoting access to fostering capabilities, which in turn will truly empower individuals to exercise and actualize their basic information rights.

All the papers and comments at this event were stimulating, but one talk in particular grabbed my attention. David Cullier, an associate professor in the School of Journalism at UofA, presented “Freedom of Information Gazebos: The Ethical Imperative for News-Library Town Squares in the Digital Age to Preserve the Communal Right to Know”, where he called on public libraries to take on a slightly new role in their communities.

Concerned that the shrinking of local news rooms and resulting lack of reporting of local news and government activities, Cullier called on libraries to be more proactive in the gathering and sharing of public records and other government information — to become freedom of information gazebos. He points out that:

Most communities have libraries, serving as a focal point for information important to citizens, often providing physical space for discussion, forums, and community meetings. Libraries are staffed by professionals expert in finding and disseminating information for citizens. Libraries also are embedded with a culture of information freedom.

To serve as true freedom of information gazebos, Cullier suggests, libraries would need to make several important changes in their culture and organizational composition. Libraries would need to be more aggressive in seeking information, actively filing freedom of information requests, and litigating for access to public records when necessary.

Local librarians should also engage in reporting and synthesizing government activities, such as attending a city council meeting, summarizing it online and posting the minutes and supporting documents. Cullier even suggested that MLIS programs should include journalism training, and libraries could even hire the reporters being laid off by newsrooms to perform this important function.

Most importantly, libraries would have to be granted greater independence from local governments, and protections would be necessary to protect libraries from retaliation, both in budgetary cuts or outright firings.

These are not modest proposals, but I really like the direction of Cullier’s thinking. Groups of activist-minded librarians, like Radical Reference, have embarked on similar efforts, but a call for more structural change in the nature of the library profession and institution might be just what is needed to help libraries maintain their central role in providing access to information.