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5856 results in Facet Publishing

Page 236 of 293

  • 3 - Libraries as places: challenges for the future

    • By Andrew McDonald, Professor and Director of Library and Learning Services at the University of East London. Previously he was Director of Information Services, Professor of Information Management and Strategy at the University of Sunderland, and before that Deputy Librarian at Newcastle University.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 31-54

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Many universities and other institutions around the world continue to make considerable investments in imaginatively designed new and refurbished library buildings (Cannell, 2007; Designing Libraries, 2009; Drew, 2009; Edwards, 2009; McDonald, 2002a; Niegaard et al., 2008; Wu, 2003). This is despite some almost reckless predictions about the end of libraries as ‘places’ due to the rapid growth of networked electronic information and the use of the internet. We are seeing a huge resurgence of interest in creating these new ‘places’ designed to enhance learning, teaching and research and to ‘inspire’ succeeding generations of scholars (Watson, 2006, 2007, 2008; Hoare, 2008). Ironically, the welcome advances in information technology, together with significant changes in the way people use public spaces have only served to strengthen the role of libraries as important places in our universities.

    A librarian who has been given the exciting responsibility of creating a new building has two significant managerial challenges: developing a compelling vision for the new space and leading the project to make sure the vision is realized. Place making is an enjoyable and creative art, and success requires a thorough understanding of the planning and design process (Khan, 2009; McDonald, 2007a) and an appreciation of the important qualities of creating good 21st-century space (McDonald, 2003, 2006, 2007b).

    Although the emphasis in this chapter is primarily on university libraries, the principles discussed are sufficiently generic to relate to other sorts of libraries and, indeed, to learning spaces in general. They are equally relevant to all place-making activities: a major new building or an extension, a refurbishment or an adaptation, smaller projects concerned with making better use of existing space, or a mixture of these.

    Let us first explore the nature of the managerial challenge.

    The managerial challenge

    Shaping new library spaces remains a substantial and complex managerial challenge, arguably the biggest and most important professional challenge the library manager will face. It involves vision and strategy, leadership and management, communication and creativity, and project management with all its associated risks. Many library managers may only have one opportunity to plan a new building in their career, and even though very large capital sums are often involved, they will almost certainly have had little experience or training for managing such a project.

  • 5 - Second Life and libraries: boom or bust?

  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 69-86

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Second Life (SL) is arguably the most popular and well known of what are known as multi-user-virtual-environments (MUVEs). While awareness and knowledge of MUVEs is growing there are still many who have only a vague idea of what they are and how they relate to the future of libraries and higher education. In 2008 Educause added a section on SL to its ‘7 things you should know about …’ series, which provides a useful framework for this discussion.

    Launched in 2003, Second Life is the largest virtual world, with tens of millions of square meters of virtual lands, more than 13 million registered users (or ‘residents’), and a thriving economy…. Developers of Second Life continue to refine the application, adding functionality and increasing the level at which aspects of the environment – such as the flowing of water, the movement of trees in the wind, the way light changes during the course of a day – reflect those of the real world. Residents of Second Life exist ‘in-world’ through personal avatars, [animated figures that can walk, run and fly] and can spend time in any of a vast number of locations (or ‘islands’) that have been created for purposes including education, socializing, entertainment and commerce.

    (Educause, 2008)

    The costs of a Second Life

    One question that arises early in any discussion of SL is that of cost. It is possible to participate in SL without any expenditure of money. There is no cost for the SL program download, nor for the avatar and its use. While some areas of SL are blocked from entry by their owners, most areas are open to the public at no cost. Additionally, many interest groups have been organized. You can join multiple groups at no cost and receive notification of their activities. Most of these activities – poetry readings, plays, dances, classes, discussion groups – are also available at no cost. And there are locations called ‘sandboxes’ on which you can build and script objects to store, at no cost, in your inventory. ‘Sandboxes’ are regularly cleaned of the objects created there. You must own, be given owner privileges or rent property in SL in order to permanently place objects. Owning land costs money.

  • Foreword

  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp vii-x

  • Summary

    I am delighted to have been asked to write a foreword to this important book. I will comment on some of the challenges discussed by the distinguished authors and reflect on the scope and international nature of the debate swirling around the question of ‘Whither the academic library?’

    It is entirely appropriate that not only are the authors who address this question hugely respected figures in their domains, but also they reflect between them a truly international perspective, or more accurately, a developed world perspective, reminding us all rather painfully of the new kinds of information schisms that divide countries in the digital age.

    The future academic library envisioned by our authors recognizes a rapidly changing context – in technology, publishing, user behaviour and expectations, all of which challenge the very nature of academic libraries, their leadership, organizational sustainability and integrity.

    I am particularly struck in the debates on the overall theme of the library of the future that we are at a stage in our digital journey which is full of paradoxes, and our library organizations need bold innovation in management now more than ever. Models centred on traditional styles of control and efficiency will not suffice in the world of make-or-break challenges that libraries are facing. Pioneering leadership and radical innovation in management are not generally associated with academic or other libraries: but they really need to be. In this I have been influenced by Gary Hamel and his arguments for a revolution in leadership attributes.

    Looking through the contributions, I see commonly agreed challenges, but no common solutions. Everyone refers to the importance, even centrality, of the web and particularly Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. The opportunities of the Web 2.0 and social networking world are clear to all and there is much activity across libraries to embed these technologies in appropriate ways within their services, and more widely within a digital framework of learning and teaching and research processes. This should contribute to the continuing relevance and visibility of librarians and information specialists in supporting enhanced student and academic experiences. It remains, however, a non-trivial challenge to embed this changed approach within libraries, to upskill colleagues, and to try to keep pace with digital-native users.

  • 1 - Waiting for the barbarians: seeking solutions or awaiting answers?

    • By Derek Law, Now a professor at the University of Strathclyde, has worked in several British universities and published and spoken at conferences extensively.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 1-14

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Cavafy's (1961) famous poem describes the paralysis induced when waiting for an event that never happens, finding distraction in other things while expecting imminent cataclysm. Libraries have perhaps been guilty of this in recent years, joining the chorus bemoaning the imminent arrival of the digital barbarians and undertaking a whole series of avoidance tactics which make libraries ever more efficient but ever less relevant. Like Cavafy's senators, libraries have prepared themselves, decked themselves in finery but have waited for the future to come to them rather than gone out to engage with it.

    The arrival of aliteracy

    Recently, a well known national chain of bookshops stocked perhaps the ultimate symbol of what a post-war baby-boomer and wholly literate generation would see as the final, conclusive evidence of dumbing down – a Leonardo Da Vinci action figure. Leonardo Da Vinci, the advertising blurb noted, was the original Renaissance man. He was a master of painting, science, language and (most importantly of all!) the inspiration for Leonardo Di Caprio's name. The website proudly noted that an Einstein action figure would follow. Presumably he would conquer evil with equations. While it is very easy to make the case for this as dumbing down, it is also a marker for the seismic shift which is taking place. There is always inter-generational tension, but we are on the cusp of an era when all the certainties of literacy may well disappear. We are close to a world of aliteracy, where reading and writing as generations have known them become optional, life-style choices rather than the fundamental attributes of a civilized person. Coupled with this is a move from a text-based society to an image-based society. A whole range of shared cultural reference points relied on words:

  • • Doctor Livingstone, I presume

  • • The Charge of the Light Brigade

  • • Never in the field of human conflict …

  • • e=mc2

  • • I have a dream.

    • These vaguely remembered phrases, and dozens like them, carry a raft of meaning and shared values known to everyone, or rather, everyone above a certain age. But consider the shared cultural reference points of recent years. Everyone can conjure the images of the fall of the Berlin Wall, of the lone protester in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square, or of the little girl running naked and screaming down the road in Vietnam.

  • 6 - Some new business ideas in the HSS publishing space: what may librarians expect?

    • By Frances Pinter, Publisher at Bloomsbury Academic, a new imprint recently launched by Bloomsbury Publishing, specializing in humanities and social sciences at the tertiary level.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 87-100

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Academic publishers don't like edited volumes. They believe that libraries are more likely to purchase single-authored volumes instead. They groan when academics come along with proposals for edited volumes. Sometimes these are accepted as a tactic to catch the editor and turn him or her into an author of a book-length work that conventional wisdom says will sell more copies. The sprat to catch a mackerel. However, there are some topics that require a breadth of knowledge that surpasses the experience and wisdom of any particular individual. The contents of this book, for instance, would have been impossible for one individual to cover with the depth and experience of the contributors assembled here. And even if such a paragon of wisdom were to exist, by the time the relevant data was assembled, the book would be out of date.

    We are all, writers and readers, grappling to understand the fastmoving environment in which we live and operate. Some try to preserve old world virtues, whilst others are steaming ahead into uncharted waters, creating new models and methods – often with unforeseen consequences. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight some of the challenges facing traditional scholarly publishers as they've tried to adapt to the new digital environment. It aims to map out some key concerns from a variety of perspectives and then indulge in some blue-sky thinking as to how the future might look. My thoughts are informed by our attempts at Bloomsbury Academic to build a new business model with flexible licensing practices at its core. It intends to make the best use of both old and new media as they co-exist in the very unstable period of transition that we are in today.

    Ring-fencing the discussion

    The scope of this chapter is limited to a very specific area of academic publishing: library collections – the prime venue (whether physical or virtual) where scholars and students find content. It deals with humanities and social science (HSS) books, or the ‘long form publication’ as some refer to books in the online environment. Reference will be made to scientific, technical and medical (STM) and professional publishing. Developments in the scholarly journal world do, of course, have implications for the future of the book.

Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
  • Initiatives, Ideas and Challenges
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010
  • There are huge challenges facing the library and information science profession owing to the rapidly changing environment in which it exists. Librarians need to be 'blended professionals' who can take all their professional skills and experience, and adapt them to different business models, strategic challenges and communities of practice. This topical edited collection will stimulate strategic and innovative thinking and question the status quo. It will be a 'must read' for leaders and future leaders of the profession, who will be challenged to align library services with the changing demands of the academic community and the work environment. Edited by a thought leader with an international reputation, it will bring together renowned authors from across the globe who are breaking traditional moulds and boundaries in a way that will have a profound impact on the way libraries and library services are conceptualized in the years to come. They represent the key links in the knowledge chain: authors, publishers, academics, community knowledge creators, librarians and institutions; the student perspective will also be provided. The five most compelling messages the book will contain are: engage in and support eLearning; be involved in institutional knowledge and information management strategies; support students and academic staff in the virtual learning space as well as in the library and on the web; be prepared to acquire, manage and make accessible information that is not traditionally the province of the library; and, new paradigms for services, and funding for services, will be necessary. This book is essential reading for all library managers and educators who wish to add real value to their organization by thinking strategically and informing decision making at organizational level. It will also be of great value to academic administrators and government policy analysts involved with learning and teaching.

  • 8 - Knowledge management, universities and libraries

    • By Helen Hayes, spent 10 years at the senior executive level of two major research universities and 20 years in library management. She was Vice- Principal for Information (1999–2003) at the University of Melbourne, Philip G. Kent, University Librarian at the University of Melbourne.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 119-144

  • Summary

    Introduction

    In this century of creativity and ideas, the most valuable resources available to any organizations are human skills, expertise and relationships. Knowledge Management is about capitalizing on these precious assets in a systematic fashion.

    Geisler and Wickramasinghe (2009)

    The term ‘knowledge management’ became popular in the 1990s. This quote highlights the human and organizational aspects of the concept and the benefit of the approach for improving innovation and productivity. Knowledge has contributed to human existence since the beginning of time and it has been at the heart of universities since their foundation. Lee (2005) notes that in 1965 management-thought leader Drucker postulated that knowledge would replace machinery, land and labour as a primary source of production. The knowledge economy and growth of knowledge workers evidence this trend. The core strength of knowledge management is in knowledge sharing that leads to innovation, change and improvement.

    In the 21st century we have cause to reassess the concept, particularly in the higher education environment. Has knowledge management delivered all that was promised in the early hype? Libraries and technology have changed significantly since the early 1990s. Have libraries and technology delivered as expected against the knowledge management agenda, and what lessons have we learnt? This chapter examines the current status of knowledge management and its role in higher education and libraries. Drawing on experience at the University of Melbourne and beyond, we suggest that knowledge management principles are still manifest today. Following on from the initial hype, knowledge management is embedded in many activities that perhaps don't acknowledge the label.

    Knowledge management

    Knowledge management defined

    In 2003 Standards Australia brought together practitioners from a variety of disciplines to develop an interim Australian knowledge management standard. This acknowledged that no single discipline owned knowledge management. The definition embodied in the 2005 standard is holistic:

    A trans-disciplinary-approach to improving organisational outcomes and learning through maximising the use of knowledge. It involves the design, implementation and review of social and technological activities and processes to improve the creating, sharing and applying or using of knowledge. Knowledge management is concerned with innovation and sharing behaviours, managing complexity and ambiguity through knowledge networks and connections, exploring smart processes, and deploying people-centric technologies.

    (Standards Australia, 2005)

  • 7 - Loosely joined: the discovery and consumption of scholarly content in the digital era

    • By Paul Coyne, Vice-President of Innovation for Emerald Group Publishing Limited, a leading publisher of management research.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 101-118

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The library has been a focal point for innovation in digital services since the advent of micro-computing and, latterly, the web. Technology in the library is not new; nor are concerns about the role of technology in the library. However, the advent of the internet, the growth of social networks and the increasingly mobile nature of digital technologies pose new and important challenges and opportunities for academic libraries in how they manage the abundance of information and make it available.

    Academic libraries are having to respond to the needs of a new generation of ‘digital natives’, who see access to social software as a basic human right, yet the need to preserve privacy, reliability and accountability remains fundamental to the sustainability of such institutions.

    This chapter will explore the recent history of technological advances in the library and show how the early theoretical ‘memex’ system proposed by Vannevar Bush in 1945 (Bush, 1945) is only now becoming a reality, with the advent of cloud computing. It will show how the ability to link and access data, increased expectations, a shift to user-centred services and a change in how library space is used are leading to a fundamental restyling of libraries, to a point where Web 2.0 technologies are becoming central to their function rather than add-on facilities.

    The concept of Library 2.0 is still not well formed, but it is providing a framework for understanding that adaptability and flexibility are essential to ensuring that academic libraries remain central to the learning experience, provide open access for users and protect and promote quality authorship.

    Big, bigger, invisible!

    It is commonly asserted that the digital era has brought new challenges and opportunities to the fore. However, problems of growth and the advancement of technology have been identified for some time. In his 1983 paper, James Thompson described the ‘End of Libraries’ and pointed to advances in micro-computing that then provoked anxiety, and questioned the purpose of the library and the role of the librarian in the electronic age.

  • 11 - Adding value to learning and teaching

    • By Sue McKnight, International leader in libraries and eLearning. She is Director of Libraries and Knowledge Resources at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 197-216

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The reputation of the academic library has long been associated with research and scholarly publishing, and its role in supporting under - graduate and postgraduate teaching programmes has almost been assumed. This chapter highlights the significant contributions made by academic libraries in support of learning and teaching and explores issues associated with retaining and enhancing these roles in the future. The intention of this chapter is to inspire creative thinking about what future academic library services to support learning and teaching could be like.

    Today's academic libraries exist within a changing landscape of traditional on-campus and virtual university activity. The entire university is undergoing significant change. Universities are rapidly introducing blended mode (online activities and resources complementing face-toface lectures) and wholly online learning in addition to the traditional face-to-face teaching. Library services have to adapt to these new modes of delivery. Libraries also have to develop new services to respond to the changing student cohorts that result from these new learning and teaching opportunities.

    Other chapters in this book discuss the challenges of meeting the new digital research agenda; issues to be faced when considering the physical space of the academic library of the future; the impact of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. Although these topics are directly related to supporting scholarship and learning and teaching, they have been excluded here.

    Academic libraries today

    The Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) in the United Kingdom established a Learning and Teaching Task and Finish Group in 2008 to scope the principal areas of activity where university libraries contribute to, influence and impact on learning and teaching activities. The group consisted of representatives from a number of SCONUL groups and from the Higher Education Academy. The SCONUL Executive felt that although there was clear evidence of the value adding of academic libraries in support of research, there was less qualitative and quantitative evidence of their role in supporting learning and teaching.

    The Task and Finish Group presented its findings at SCONUL's Summer Conference, convened in Bournemouth from 10 to 12 June 2009 (McKnight, 2009). It was identified that academic libraries add value for a large number of stakeholders in relation to learning and teaching: academic staff, students, the higher education institution, parents, employers, professional associations, library and information science educators and government bodies.

  • 2 - The delete generation: how citizen-created content is transforming libraries

    • By Penny Carnaby, New Zealand's National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of New Zealand, a position she has held since 2003.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 15-30

  • Summary

    Our world is changing

    There is a grass-roots-led revolution happening in communities right around the world and it's about to get a whole lot noisier. It is a revolution challenging established knowledge systems and practices. Above all, it is shaking the very foundations of information management and professional practice in libraries throughout the world. It is a citizen-created revolution, one that puts the content creator at centre stage. Established professional practices are expanding to new horizons and opportunities. And the once sacrosanct and established body of knowledge is now much more blurred, with educators, information and communications technology (ICT) specialists and, increasingly, individuals shaping the world of librarians and libraries in an unprecedented way. Alongside this people-led revolution we have a further challenge, in that every second of every minute of the day people are deleting their history, their thoughts and arguments, which these days are invariably presented in digital form.

    Given the seismic changes for the profession, this is not a time for professional complacency, nor is it a time to feel anything but excited. With the new knowledge wave sweeping the globe, it would be natural for the library profession to ask: ‘Are we prepared and engaged boldly enough to effectively capitalize on this potentially transformative opportunity?’

    How well is the library profession really responding?

    If we had to rate our response to these changes, a tough but fair assessment would be that the profession ‘has done quite well’ internationally. Certainly, we have responded to the Web 2.0 world, with its emphasis on social networking and citizen-created content. We know and talk about ‘widgets’ at www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget and ‘mashups’ at www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup and we understand the value of reusing and repurposing content. While we may not all be ecstatic about the burgeoning use of Wikipedia at www.wikipedia.org as a key reference source, rather than a more traditional and authoritative source such as Britannica at www.britannica.com, we can say with some confidence that the profession generally ‘gets’ it.

  • 10 - The leadership of the future

    • By Liz Wright, founding director of two international leadership development consultancies, The Leadership Cafe and People First International, based in the UK and Melbourne, Australia.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 169-196

  • Summary

    The slot in culture that I'm most closely associated with is one in which charlatans declare that they know the future. My job is to sit near that slot and when people approach me I say, ‘Only charlatans say they really know the future’.

    William Gibson (2007)

    Introduction

    We live in an age of uncertainty and widespread turbulence, where ‘the rate of change is the biggest change’ we face (Brockman, 2004), yet where our ability to predict and prepare for the future has never been more important to the survival of our organizations and our endeavours.

    Whoever can most accurately predict the future can create a future ready workforce, adapt organizational systems, reconstruct processes that interface better with clients and stakeholders, and generally rethink their product, their production methods, their supply chain, their mode of product delivery and their product marketplace before their hungry competitors. Strategic and operational innovation is a key to competitive success in the 21st century: effective creation and leadership of the cultures that create innovation are vitally important. This applies in an academic library context as well as in the commercial sector.

    Leaders need to anticipate the future. As well as helping us to prepare for the future, this type of focus helps us to make sense of the present: ‘A global futures perspective can help leaders make sense out of the chaotic patterns of change in the external world’ (Johansen, 2009). Yet Kouzes and Posner (2009) comment that being forward looking is the one leadership competence that leaders today are least capable of demonstrating. We must rectify that. Leading with an eye firmly fixed on the future, ‘future watching’ for new ideas, directions, trends, inventions and models, must become a thoroughly widespread capability, practised continually across the organization through every means possible, if organizations are to compete and innovate successfully.

    Many of the innovations of the future are visible in the green shoots of the present. For some proactive, far-sighted organizations, new forms of leadership are already here; for most, they will be here within the next 5–10 years, for as the visionary writer William Gibson famously commented, ‘the future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed’ (Gibson, 1999).

  • 3 - Information policy and the public sphere

  • from Part 1 - Contexts for information policy
  • Ian Cornelius
  • Book:
    Information Policies and Strategies
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2010, pp 43-62

  • Summary

    DISCUSSION OF THE information society idea and information policy gave us the idea about weak and strong theories of information policy, and also the ideas of autonomy for information policy and the operational frameworks for them. The idea of the public sphere is so closely identified with the exchange of information and the rules governing it that information policy must seem either redundant, because the public sphere is a socially and historically determined environment that itself constitutes the rules for information exchange, or it must seem that the public sphere legitimates a regime of information policy to sustain its existence. This divergence we will unravel later. At present we just need to identify some of the characteristics of the public sphere and some of the arguments about its nature.

    We are all familiar with public discussion of topical issues, be they international or national political questions, the world economy, questions of social norms and expectations, or disease, war, education – in fact all the issues of modern life. We are also used to ceaseless coverage of leisure activities in the media – sport, music, films, even books, and the lives of celebrities. Many of us are now also daily consumers of more private information that we individually put into a public arena, or make publicly accessible, through social networking media like Facebook, Twitter and so on. This volume of publicly accessible information is a recent phenomenon that poses and faces several threats. One threat, mentioned in Chapter 1, is to personal privacy as we disclose so much about ourselves. Another more recent potential threat is to the existence of the institutional forms through which we are accustomed to getting our public discussions – the serious newspapers and television programmes. Many of these depend on advertising revenue and now face closure as two forces combine to assail their revenue. First, the current economic downturn, which is diminishing advertising budgets and revenues, and this is escalating the impact of, second, a more long term decline in advertising as many staple sources of small town and national newspapers find alternative and cheaper ways to advertise through the internet. Strange as it may seem now, the forces that controlled advertising have been identified by the major author of ideas about the public sphere as the primary cause of corruption in the public sphere.

  • 4 - Information rights and information policy

  • from Part 1 - Contexts for information policy
  • Ian Cornelius
  • Book:
    Information Policies and Strategies
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2010, pp 63-82

  • Summary

    INFORMATION POLICY AS an issue of rights raises a completely different set of questions that lie outside the framework we have so far considered. Until now we have looked at information policies as parts of larger social forces and movements or as things that stand on their own within the structure of each society. If we look at rights we find that the standard statements about human rights include certain items that we can identify as information rights. No one has looked at information rights independently of other rights and it is not clear that a distinction between various sorts of rights can be made in that way. For example, most statements of rights include a right to freedom of religious belief or practice. This must include, for those religions that use them, the right to use their particular sacred documents. So is freedom of religion an information right? Most people would consider it as a sort of right that stood on its own rather than being one of a group of other rights.

    There is also the separate question of how we treat religious claims to the unquestionable status of their own central documents – mostly we do not privilege documents or their contents, so are we inventing a privileged status for religious documents, and does that status subtend from currently practised religions only – in other words is it dependent on the existence of living practitioners – or are all religious documents of all known religions past and present included? If we extend the notion of what counts as a document to include various artefacts with religious or other significance we find that the idea of rights must become very extensive. Commonly rights, especially when expressed as human rights, are held to exist for living humans, and the rights associated with them are cited as rights for any human who happens to be living. So, the right to freedom of expression must exist even if no human being is currently seeking to exercise that right, as must the right to privacy and the right to have certain sorts of information – for example, the right to know of any charges brought against you, and the right to know who your accusers are. These are rights about information too.

  • 2 - Globalization and information societies

  • from Part 1 - Contexts for information policy
  • Ian Cornelius
  • Book:
    Information Policies and Strategies
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2010, pp 27-42

  • Summary

    WHEN WE SPEAK of globalization we should understand exactly how the term is being employed, as this will affect our understanding of how information policies should be shaped, understood or changed. Asimilar caution applies to our use of the terms public sphere and information society.

    Globalization can be used to describe a recent phenomenon that has transformed much of international life, or at least has transformed much discussion about the impact globally of changes in the world economy and especially in financial services. If the term really is used to describe these transformations it should be a shorthand for a very complex set of changes, and it might be more common to speak of subsets of the overall phenomenon that relate to particular sectors. We are immediately in territory where extreme care is advised. Such descriptions, and we would want to know that they are accurate and comprehensive, may indeed describe current changes or conditions, but the image so created will predispose us to select certain policy options in a very wide range of sectors. Any description will seek the authority of accuracy and comprehensiveness but may also seek the persuasiveness of being predictive as well as explanatory: our simple term ‘globalization’ suddenly becomes something close to a model and goes well beyond being a mere description.

    A second temptation, beyond accepting a plausible model of recent world changes, is to accept that the term, in this case ‘globalization’, but it might also be ‘information society’, goes well beyond being a mere model to explain current changes and predict future movements. It is actually a concept that embraces far more than changes in volume or direction and in fact amounts to a substantive qualitative change in our society across the globe. When ‘globalization’ is used like this we are being asked to accept that models, understandings, explanations and expectations are to be jettisoned in favour of a new understanding not only of the situation as it is, but also of how the interplay of economic, cultural, social, political and financial forces will work in future and what substantial differences we must accept as the basis for our own future actions and decision making in consequence.

  • Part 2 - Information policy sectors

  • Ian Cornelius
  • Book:
    Information Policies and Strategies
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2010, pp 83-86

  • Summary

    THE DISCUSSION IN preceding chapters about the operating context for information policies shows that much depends on how you see that context, both for an understanding of what information policies can do and for generating ideas about what they might do. The final examination of human rights in information also showed that where law brings them into existence information policies, both generally and in particular sectors, do exist and we must recognize them. Even if a country has no law about, say, intellectual property ownership, there is still that set of human rights principles that can be appealed to as an argument that morally and inherently such rights do exist and this can act as a spur to those who want to campaign for legislation. The focus on what exists, in the moral imagination or in enforceable laws, brings us back to consider what happens in particular sectors, and the debate about the effects of the current state of law and custom and its enforcement and how things should change, or can proceed.

    In the following chapters we will look at four areas of activity: censorship and freedom of expression, privacy and data protection, freedom of information, and intellectual property. This is not an exhaustive list but it will serve us with examples that cover the points that need to be made about strategies and policy development. In examining individual sectors we will not be looking for comprehensive statements of the current state of law or practice; these are well covered in other excellent works that relate to particular jurisdictions.

    The points that need to be uncovered here are those that indicate the range of possibilities, the history of practice, and the basis for arguments about what could or should be done. Knowing what an information policy should look like, what it should cover and contain, depends in part on understanding the operating context and the theoretical underpinnings that we have already considered, but it also depends on knowing the range of what is possible and what effects various policy instruments will have on daily life.

  • Part 1 - Contexts for information policy

  • Ian Cornelius
  • Book:
    Information Policies and Strategies
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2010, pp 19-26

  • Summary

    RARELY DOES ANY information issue arise that is divorced from any connection with other questions. Even with seemingly clear information issues like censorship, the control of content, the context is critical. How critical will become apparent when we consider international information rights.

    Understanding the international contexts

    Understanding the contexts is important if we are to comprehend the total information picture, and important if we are to analyse what information policies and strategies should be. Let us start with two simple statements. First, information issues are about utterances, but they are also about ideas. Second, the current information context is strongly influenced by international trade and the internationalization of technology through global provision of access to communication media. We need ways of understanding these and there are three that we will discuss in Part 1:

  • ■ the idea of an information society and its impact on the regulation of information

  • ■ the idea of a public sphere in which ideas are communicated and messages exchanged

  • ■ the idea of information rights.

    • Let us consider first the association between utterances and ideas. We cannot separate any statement from the medium it appears in, and we cannot isolate a statement in any medium or format from all other forms of that statement, or the context in which it acquires meaning. In the previous chapter the instance of separating the book from the film or the web page was mentioned, but we must go further and identify the social attitude towards some texts – sacred texts or legal testimony, for example – and the process by which a document can appear before you. The newspaper in your hand is a by-product of a long sequence of actions by which journalists observe events, write up or compose copy, perhaps including not only a description of the event but also some commentary and analysis, and send that copy electronically to the newspaper office where decisions about the content of the next issue and each individual page are made. Then pages are laid out, there may be decisions to excise some content and include local specific content for regional issues, and the electronic tape is distributed to printing outlets where the paper is finally produced, distributed and sold.

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