Ethical Dilemmas with Modern Technology

In today's world, the ethical dilemmas faced by information professionals in the workplace are numerous. The evolution of modern technology has changed the way in which people interact with information, interact with each other and their environment. Describe two ethical scenarios concerning the designing or implementation of digital services in libraries. Based on your descriptions, please analyze these two scenarios with a careful consideration of the Code of Ethics and provide possible solutions for these two scenarios.

Dilemma 1: People have high expectations of libraries. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 78% of respondents felt that “public libraries help them find information that is trustworthy and reliable” (Geiger, 2017, para. 2). That is great news to hear. However, what happens when library users come to use the internet and do not seek out librarians for help with information retrieval?

We live in a world of fake news. From memes to questionable posts, from deepfakes to blatant lies - the internet is full of false information masquerading as truth. The issue of fake news is a vast topic that has its own set of ethical issues. What I’d like to discuss briefly, is the ethical dilemma of using technology to alert our users to information that is questionable. Even now, Facebook is trying to combat some of the issues within its social sphere by adding disclaimers to certain posts that it deems untrue or questionable (Heijmans, 2019). If users come into the library expecting trustworthy, high-quality, reliable information, how do we ensure we are giving it to them? Especially when there is no human interaction?

The technology exists now to add a Chrome extension that purports to fight fake news. Adding a chrome extension would be simple enough but do we need to? Should we have to? The ethical implications are, like every other response on the thread, varied and multifaceted.

It is our duty to give patrons “the highest level of service” (American Library Association, 2008) which includes the best, most correct information. However, adding a plugin or extension might violate users’ privacy.  We also may be unwittingly forcing the user to censor or limit their information results by adding the disclaimer. Also, it turns out that adding disclaimers to fake news may make people “more willing to believe other stories…[e]ven if those additional untagged stories also turn out to be false” (Dizikes, 2020).

Information literacy is becoming more and more important. As librarians, workshops and classes on how to apply critical thinking skills and tools to evaluate websites should be shared to help combat fake or questionable content. But as Orick (2000) states, the internet is so quickly changing that the validity of the content might change from day-to-day.

Dilemma 2: Online learning is a convenient and popular technology that has really gained traction within the last decade. As the UNT Library Science program can attest, face-to-face is not necessary to learn a topic or to engage with peers. Many online courses use web-based software (e.g. Canvas, Blackboard) that allow users to login, interact, and work from anywhere with an internet connection. However, this software has ways to mine data from its users. It can track students’ clicks, time on page, who they’ve interacted with, files uploaded, files downloaded, and more. From a business perspective, this mined data is gold. It can help show correlations between students receiving A's and the time they spend on the software. It can help show areas that are being underutilized or not used at all that can then be eliminated from future budgets. However, as Jones and Salo (2018) explain, the software and the data that are able to be mined have ethical implications in the field of library and information science, especially when the same set of data mining standards are used in mining the library’s service.

Knowing which actions and services a patron uses can be beneficial to the university. Having that knowledge in quantifiable measures with the ability to provide correlations and statistically relevant data can help the university gain revenue and focus on areas where they may have been lacking before. However, patrons have the right to privacy. The webpages they visited, the clicks they made, and the articles they read should not be saved and put on a server waiting to be analyzed later. Especially without identifiers removed and especially not without patron’s consent. The duty to keep our patrons’ information private should be a top priority. Whether they are using a public, academic, or another type of library they should be comfortable in knowing that their information will not be sold or used for means in which they have no say.

References

American Library Association. (2008). Code of Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/tools/ethics

Dizikes, P. (2020, March 2). The catch to putting warning labels on fake news. MIT News. Retrieved from http://news.mit.edu/2020/warning-labels-fake-news-trustworthy-0303

Geiger. A. W. (2017, August 30). Most Americans – especially Millennials – say libraries can help them find reliable, trustworthy information. Pew Center Research Fact Tank. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/30/most-americans-especially-millennials-say-libraries-can-help-them-find-reliable-trustworthy-information/

Heijmans, P. (2019, November 30). Facebook adds disclaimer to post that Singapore deems false. Bloomberg.Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-29/singapore-orders-facebook-to-correct-blog-s-false-statements

Jones, K., & Salo, D. (2018). Learning analytics and the academic library: Professional ethics commitments at a crossroads. College & Research Libraries, 79(3). DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.79.3.304

Orick, J. (2000). The virtual library: Changing Roles and ethical challenges for librarians. International Information & Library Review, 32(3/4), 313-624. DOI: 10.1080/10572317.2000.10762520