LIS 550 Winter 2010 Unsworth 1/29/2010. Presentation deliverables 1.Meet with me to discuss presentation plan, readings and order 2.The presentation should

LIS 550 Winter 2010

Unsworth1/29/2010

LIS 550 Winter 2010 Kris Unsworth Instructor

Presentation deliverables

1. Meet with me to discuss presentation plan, readings and order

2. The presentation should be at least 50 minutes long but if it goes longer because of discussions that is fine

3. PowerPoint is a good tool to help the audience follow your presentation. I suggest having some slides

4. Try and engage the class with case studies and / or group work

5. Following your presentation send your slides to me so I can post them on our class website

6. Within one week of your presentation each student should submit a reflection to me in the form of a Word document. The reflection is a chance for you to address the process of the preparing the presentation and executing it. This is also an opportunity for you to mention any problems you might have had within your group.


Paper expectationsThe term paper should be a critical examination of one or more of the issues we discuss in class or in the assigned readings. This assignment is intended to be primarily an independent piece of scholarship; some additional readings will be necessary, but comprehensive knowledge of the literature is neither expected nor desired. The point is to work through the issue you choose in a sophisticated way, making sense of the issues involved and the arguments that surround them and then defending a position which you find tenable on the basis of those arguments.


Paper deliverables

•2/3 - Paper topic and initial literature review

•2/19 – Draft to reviews and instructor•3/5 – Peer reviews•3/12 – Final papers due

Introduction to Information Policy - Part 2


What is information policy?


Information is …

•“the content of a message or communication conveyed and assimilated by the person receiving that message” (Hernon, 1989). ▫So if a message is shouted out into the void

does its content ever become information?

•Intangible•Not consumed by use•Has value


Information?

•Some of the earliest archeological finds are written records of crop production, slave holdings and lists of “free men” in Babylonian society (Vismann, 2000).

•By the mid 1500s police in London actively compiled information on people living in areas throughout the metropolis (Higgs, 2004).


Policy?

•“Whatever governments choose to do or not to do” (Dye, 1992).

•“Stated most simply, public policy is the sum of government activities, whether acting directly or through agents, as it has an influence on the life of citizens” (Peters, 1999).

•The Freedom of Information Act marks the point of “modern” information policy.


Information policy

“a set of interrelated principles, laws, guidelines, rules and regulations, directives, procedures, judgments, interpretations, and practices that guide the creation, management, access, and use of information” (McClure, 1996).


Or…

“social , political, legal, economic and technological decisions about the role of information in society. These decisions operate both at a societal level when applied to national and international policy, and at an instrumental level, as they impact the creation, dissemination, use and preservation of information” (Maxell, 2003).


Why do we need information policy?

•Address concerns related to the digital divide

•Insure a knowledgeable citizenry•Define the role of public libraries as

intermediaries •Economic concerns•Privacy in regard to healthcare


Policy instruments

•The Freedom of Information Act (5 USC 552)

•The Privacy Act (5 USC 552a)•The U.S. Government Printing Office’s

Depository Library Program (44 USC, Chapter 19) and federal printing laws (44 USC, Chapter 17)

•The Copyright Act (17 USC 101)•The Paperwork Reduction Act 0f 1995•Circulars and bulletins from OMB - OIRA


Creation

•Intellectual property and copyright•Ingenuity•Economics


Management – on a Federal / National level• Federal Depository Library Program• Open Government Initiative -

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/• Office of Management and Budget – OMB

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/ ▫“Influences the flow of information and statistical data

through: Its philosophy of and role in, information collection Its budgetary responsibilities The approval process of forms for the collection of

information Controlling the Information Collection Budget” (Hernon

et.al., 2002, p. 121).

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/


Access

•The public’s “right to know”•Information literacy

▫“the ability to locate, process, and use information effectively, regardless of delivery mechanisms and the type of format in which that information appears” (McClure, 1996 p. 216).


Use

Is government secrecy warranted?

What about copyright?

And software? Should “software be free?”


Preservation

Think of the East German Ministry for State Security archives case…should this kind of information be preserved? Do individual’s have a right to information collected by the government about their personal activities? Do we have a right to information collected by businesses about our purchasing habits, decisions based on the risk we pose for health or auto insurance companies?

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

(James Madison to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822 retrieved at: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/)

LIS 550 Winter 2010 Kris Unsworth

Instructor


Democracy involves more than access to information but the willingness to use it. Writers of the Federalist papers worried about “mere democracy” and the tendency for the masses to follow demagoguery and emotionality.

Democracy and knowledge

•Democracy includes a civic responsibility to be informed

•A responsibility may be more apt than calling it a right…because we would have to consider and individual’s right to be ignorant or ill-informed

• It’s not possible to make a one to one comparison between information that is made available and information comprehended (Bathory and McWilliams in Galnoor, 1977)


Instructor

Citations

•Galnoor, I. (1977). Government secrecy in democracies. New York: Harper & Row.

•Hernon, P. et. al. (2002). United States government information: Policies and sources. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.


Instructor

Documents

LIS 550 Winter 2010 Unsworth 1/29/2010. Presentation deliverables 1.Meet with me to discuss presentation plan, readings and order 2.The presentation should