Ethical Aspects of Digital Libraries Rafael Capurro FH Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences...
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Ethical Aspects of Digital Libraries
Rafael Capurro
FH Stuttgart
University of Applied Sciences
1999
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Contents
Introduction
I. Digital Libraries as an Ethical Challenge
II. From Interface Design to Interspace Design
Conclusion
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Introduction
• The rise of Information Ethics as a major discipline within LIS
• UNESCO: – Virtual Forum – 2nd International Congress on Ethical, Legal
and Societal Challenges of Cyberspace 1988
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Introduction
• What are the consequences of digital libraries with regard to local and global cultures?
• What are the challenges with regard to human rights?
• Who is responsible for what concern(s)?
• What is the impact of ethical thinking on such concerns?
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I. DL as an Ethical Challenge
Ethical Aspects of DL at the:
• ASIS Annual Conference 1997
• ASIS Annual Conference 1999
• Journal of Global Information Management
• Digital Libraries Program
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I. DL as an Ethical Challenge
• In a global environment, local regulations are a weak tool for shaping human action
• Freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of access become simultaneous rights
• Are DL taking us a step further towards the achievement of UDHR, Art. 19?
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II. From interface design to interspace design
• Digital libraries are located in the kind of global space we call cyberspace
• What is space?– Life-space and metrical space– The network of relationships and the possibility
to “dis-tance” other beings– The Cartesian viewpoint of knowledge in itself
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II. From interface...
• What happens with distances in cyberspace?– Our bodily distances to things
– Eliminating distances to digital things: bringing them to the same place, i.e. to the interface
– Ethos as habit and way of dwelling (Latin: habitare)
– Culture as creating common living places through customs
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II. From interface...
• Haunting:– what we usually do; the place we usually go to
– a kind of ghostly feeling or haunting experience
• Through the interface, cyberspace becomes a part of our life-space
• When do we feel at home in a DL?– when devices become transparent
– when they become part of a worldly structure of public interrelations or local life-spaces
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II. From interface
• Spatiality in the Internet– We can do things with words (actio digitalis in
distans) (differences with regard to: oral speech and printing)
• Real devices and cyber devices (McHoul): spectral environments
• The digital as a kind of overlap between the real and the cyber (or spectral)
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II. From interface...
• The ethical question:– how do we manage to bring DL existentially
near to people?– who will use them and who not and why?
• What we should do: – the construction of the interface– the construction of the interspace (Winograd)
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II. From interface...
• How do we manage to bring DL close(r) to people?
• How do people manage by themselves to bring DL near to themselves?
• How do we learn to become citizens of cyberspace?
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II. From interface...
UNESCO recommendations:• bring net access to poor countries• support the development of a World
Information Ethos• support concrete projets in information poor
countries• prommote public awareness on these matters
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II. From interface...
• provide permanent, specific, and detailed knowledge of existing information activities in information poor countries
• promote the rights of non-English-speaking-countries
• promote topics in information ethics to be included in curricula
• promote grassroots efforts through international organizations
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II. From interface...
Other ideas:• establishment of free nets• installation of terminals in public life-spaces• developing an ethics of care with regard to DL:
integrating digital space within the life-space, particularly within the network of paper libraries
• ethical indicatives: recomendations open to revisions
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II. From interface...
• UNESCO’s Observatory of the Inf. Society
• Two critial roles of libraries in a modern society (Nancy John):– the access role– the preservation role
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Conclusion
• The ethical problems of DL are of both a global and a local nature
• The question of inequality of access due to various kinds of constraints is a major ethical and legal issue along with
• The question of knowledge preservation and its transmission to future generations.
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Conclusion
• I have considered the question of access as a spatial problem, i.e. as a problem of integrating cyberspace into life-space:– How to create a culture of sharing and
preserving digital knowledge?– How do we manage to bring DL existentially
closer to people?
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Conclusion
• DL should be considered under the democratic premise of basic information provision
• The question of interface design should be considered also as a question of democratic interspace design
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Conclusion
The ethical imperative for DL:
“Manage knowledge and information in order to reduce inequity of access and support cultural diversity”
and its translation into ethical indicatives: it is not possible to decide a priori how this medium should be integrated within existing media environments (legal, economic and political constraints, and moral milieus).