Competency Statement: Demonstrate awareness of the ethics, values, and foundational principles of one of the information professions, and discuss the importance of those principles within that profession

Introduction

For this competency, the values of community, the foundation of intellectual freedom, and legal ethics, such as copyright and licensing, are important to information professionals as they are the internal moral compasses that guide us in ethical dilemmas encountered in every part of our career.

Digital curation is an information profession that brings together knowledge organization and archival. The origins of digital curation come from the science community, where large research data sets were collected from expensive equipment and needed to be preserved due to the high cost of replicating that data (Oliver & Ross, 2016). As digital storage became more affordable, it also became easier for those outside the science community to generate and preserve digital objects to record their own histories. Knowing that one who controls historical archives holds great power, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) provides a core values statement to empower those in the profession to equitably provide labor and resources in service of all members of a democratic society. These include access and use, accountability, advocacy, diversity, history and memory, preservation, responsible stewardship, selection, service, social responsibility, and sustainability. In addition, the SAA code of ethics are guidelines for archivists to “foster the transparency of their actions and inspire confidence in the profession” (Society of American Archivists, 2020, Code of Ethics for Archivists section, para. 1). The code calls on those in the profession to cultivate collaborative professional relationships, exercise good judgment in “appraisal, acquisition, and processing of materials,” maintain authenticity of those materials, secure and protect materials from “accidental damage, vandalism, and theft,” promote equitable access and use, ensure privacy of stakeholders of the archive, and build trust by demonstrating “professional integrity and avoid potential conflicts of interest” (Society of American Archivists, 2020, Code of Ethics for Archivists section, para. 6, 8, & 11). The SAA core values and code of ethics together help digital curators navigate ethical dilemmas as they strive to provide a reliable and trusted respository that encourages intellectual freedom and benefit the needs of the communities they serve.

Communities

The foundation of any library is the information community that it builds (or rebuilds). Communities organically build membership out of common interest, goals, beliefs, and location (Christensen & Levinson, 2003). What keeps a community together are values that sustain commitment:  membership, influence, integration, and shared emotional connection (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). Information exchange is an implicit feature within communities, and research shows that highly cohesive communities show characteristics that optimize information exchange: collaboration among diverse users, attending to users’ needs to access and use information, taking advantage of emerging technologies to share information, overcoming barriers to information sharing, and fostering trust and social connectedness (Fisher & Fulton, 2018). Understanding and applying these elements allows libraries to become a valuable hub that cultivates and grows their communities. The history of public libraries in the United States is a great example. In its first 100 years, public libraries led the development of major systems in knowledge infrastructure that would catalog resources for retrieval and sharing, improve the flow of users and materials, tax and administer the library service, and teach standards, principles, and technologies to new librarians and stewards of the library (Pawley, 2022). These efforts to share information and resources were motivated by an ideal that a well-informed citizen would make good decisions to build a country. By organizing and maintaining its information resources, the young United States held the key to growth. People can freely be a part of the community or not, but the resources and artifacts will remain. Similarly, institutions and organizations with goals of advancement and longevity may consider building their own special libraries, and digital curators, librarians of the digital age, must consider how to best facilitate information exchange among the organization’s members, whether it be data preservation, navigation and user experience, controlled vocabularies and taxonomies, or access and privacy.

Intellectual Freedom

A table of shared principles across 4 information profession organizations include: Access, Confidentiality and Privacy, Democracy, Diversity, Education and Lifelong Learning, Intellectual Freedom, Preservation, Professionalism, Service, Social Responsibility, and Sustainability (Garnar, 2022). Although it is listed as part of a whole, I believe intellectual freedom is a central principle that permeates the other principles, while also held accountable by principles such as democracy, diversity, service, and social responsibility. Deborah Caldwell-Stone (2022) summarizes intellectual freedom as “the freedom to hold, receive, and disseminate ideas and the creation of the conditions that uphold and defend those freedoms, including the right to privacy” (p. 1096). Intellectual freedom allows individuals to consent to the expression of their values for social good without being censored, and fosters a “dynamic, creative, and intellectual climate that produces innovation and new discoveries” that enhances the community (Caldwell-Stone, 2022, p. 1089). As gatekeepers to the selection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information, it is imperative that information professionals keep this principle close when building policies to ensure equitable access, diversity, inclusion, and privacy in their organizations. For digital curators, it is even more important to think about privacy and access as we advance into overlooked areas of digital privacy, such as considering the use of external vendors who may not provide explicit disclosure on their collection or use of user data, or whether they provide security features such as user access permissions.

Copyright and Licensing

It is inevitable that users will create something with the information they discover whether it be an original work or not. Copyright laws protect users by designating what is in the public domain and free for use, and they protect the creators by allowing them a limited time to profit from their original work (Minow & Hamilton, 2022). As the stewards of works, information professionals need to understand copyright laws to avoid putting users or themselves at risk of being liable for infringement by providing access. Copyright law, which has specific rules for redistribution and reproduction, is murky ground for digital products, as reproduction is part of the redistribution process, and limits access by making it inconvenient for libraries to acquire digital materials for circulation, such as high prices or library embargos. Alternatively, digital content licensing and subscription models has become the new distribution norm, and it is important for digital curators to know how to negotiate license terms with content providers that would meet user and community expectations, legally protect their use, and remain budget-friendly for their organization (Feather, et al, 2022)

Evidence

The evidence I chose to present to demonstrate this competency include a blog post examining the independent game developer community, my mentorship with GameHeads as an examination of intellectual freedom, and implementation proposal for a workflow to control the release of live content on Rocksmith+ with regional and content restrictions demonstrating workflows on controlling licensing.

Evidence #1: INFO 200 Information Communities: Blog Report #2: Indie Game Developers

In my blog post about the independent game developer community, I examine the indie game developer community by discussing its characteristics using 3 models: the angles of community by Christen & Levinson (2003) to understand how it formed, the two types of virtual communities by Komito (2001) to understand how it exists as a virtual community, and characteristics for effective communities Fisher, Unruh, and Durrance (2005) to understand the ways in which it thrives. Integrating this practice of deeply understanding the community I serve as a librarian provides the foundation to understanding the needs and behaviors of its users, and what resources and services that can help them achieve their goals. In a recent job interview for an academic engineering librarian position specializing in Computer Science, I was told that the computer science department hardly ever uses the library, and upon reviewing this evidence, I can tell that this community is building libraries of their own. Academic libraries will need to be innovative in order to attract patrons from this community.

Evidence #2: Mentorship at GameHeads

This past summer, I participated in a mentorship program for low-income youth and youth of color called GameHeads, where participants learn technology skills through developing a game in a team. They are mentored by video game professionals every week until their showcase. The program provides resources including hardware and software licenses to participants for free. It is also partnered with Liliʻuokalani Trust which allows Hawaii youth to participate and tell their native Hawaiian stories as well. I was partnered with a college senior from Hawaii majoring in History who was project managing his team of mostly East Asian members who wanted to make a game titled, “I Fruit You,” an allegory to the expression of love through serving fruit. Players must solve puzzles of increasing difficulty to advance through the story of an immigrant mother from Hong Kong raising her daughter in the US. This is not a commonly told story, but it is personal and meaningful one because I could actually see myself in it, and I wanted my mentee to be successful. During our weekly meetings, I helped him talk through his difficulties with the project, as well as validate his experiences that reminded me of my own. Because GameHeads is headquartered in Oakland, California, my mentee had concerns with transportation funds to meet with his team for the program’s showcase, so I created a GoFundMeLinks to an external site.to fundraise for his flight ticket so that he could make connections in person.. My participation in the mentorship allowed me to experience providing a space for intellectual freedom in numerous ways. GameHeads makes game development inclusive by lowering the barriers of entry to game development. It creates a supportive environment with access to resources, including hardware, software, connections, and mentorship. Students are also encouraged to develop their ideas and not be shamed or stigmatized for building what they feel is meaningful to them. Participating in this mentorship was a memorable experience in promoting intellectual freedom.

Evidence #3: Content restrictions workflow design document

I was working at Ubisoft as a game designer between 2016 and 2024, and was on a project called Rocksmith+, a subscription-based guitar-learning game that gives players access to an innovative view of  musical arrangements to around 10,000 songs and growing. When it was released in 2021, the music licensing team explained that some of the songs have regional restrictions on access and content deemed explicit by the ratings board. The music library system on the server already had a way to tell the end user client application that a song should not be shown to users in a particular region, but not yet a function to prevent showing explicit content. An interface that allowed an administrator to mark the album art of a song as explicit and the regions that restrict the display of explicit album art was needed. To expedite the requested function, a document describing the request was needed.  As songs were ingested, the administrators needed a way to flag them and ensure that the organization would be within its distribution rights and users would be within their use rights when playing along with the song. The server engineers needed a design to understand the purpose of tool and one that would make the most sense to a non-technical administrator. My usual design documents began with an overview of the request, itemized issues that originated the request, and the goals of the request. Next was a proposal section to give an example of how the tool should function to resolve the issue. As you will see from the artifact, I explored different issues and showed different examples of solutions. I also included a table of the different ratings boards and the countries that use them. The engineers used this document to guide their application of the function requests and to also work with the existing bulk selection function. In the process of creating this design document, I was made aware that content restrictions protect both the organization and the end-user. 

Conclusion

An information professional may have opportunities to work with topics and subjects outside of their expertise. They may be struggling to attract patrons, or face obstacles where collections or policies are being questioned. It is important for information professionals to prepare ourselves for challenging situations that can suffer consequences if not carefully resolved. By being aware of the principles, ethics, and values of librarianship, such as community, intellectual freedom, and privacy, I can use these tools to navigate these challenges with assuredness and confidence of my mission as an information professional.

References

Caldwell-Stone, D. (2022). Intellectual freedom. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (3rd Ed., pp. 1086-1115). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Christensen, K. & Levinson, D. (2003). Introduction and reader’s guide. In K. Christensen & D. Levinson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World (1st Ed., pp. 2-24). Sage Reference.

Feather, C., Lair, S., & Grogg, J. (2022). Information licensing. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (3rd Ed., pp. 998-1022). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Fisher, K. E., & Bishop, A. P. (2015). Information communities: Defining the focus of information service. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (1st Ed., pp. 20-26). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. https://infocom.hyperlib.sjsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Information_Services_Today_An_Introduction_-_3_Information_Communities.pdf

Fisher, K. E., Unruh, K. T., & Durrance, J. C. (2005). Information communities: Characteristics gleaned from studies of three online networks. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 40(1), 298-305. https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.1450400137

Garnar, M. L. (2022). Information ethics. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (3rd Ed., pp. 937-963). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Komito, L. (2001). Electronic communities in an information society: paradise, mirage, or malaise? Journal of Documentation, 57(1), 115-129. http://hdl.handle.net/10197/10193

Minow, M. & Hamilton, L. (2022) Copyright and creative commons. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (3rd Ed., pp. 964-996). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

McMilan, D. W. & Chavis, D. M. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 6-23. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6629(198601)14:1<6::AID-JCOP2290140103>3.0.CO;2-I

Oliver, G., & Ross, H. (2016). Digital curation (2nd ed.). American Library Association.

Pawley, C. (2022). History of libraries, information, and communities. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (3rd Ed., pp. 82-107). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Society of American Archivists. (August 2020). SAA core values statement and code of ethics. https://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics