Information Justice
LIS 5020 Foundations of Library and Information Science
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The Ethical Issue of Homelessness in Public Libraries
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Among the many ethical issues within the field of librarianship and information science today, the issue of homelessness and public libraries is one that regularly impacts the daily operations of a public library. Little is being done at the federal or state level to provide long-term solutions for the issue of homelessness in urban areas, so it is left to municipal governments, churches, and nonprofits to offer programs to assist homeless citizens. Public libraries, by default, are often the only public space available for the homeless population to spend daytime hours, especially during inclement weather. In response, many public libraries have begun explicitly targeting the homeless in their library codes of conduct. These codes contain language that prohibits patrons from carrying too many bags, having strong body odor, loitering, and using the restrooms for washing purposes. Unfortunately, these codes are policing a vulnerable subset of the population that most depend on the resources and information available at a library.
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LIS 5566 Multicultural Literature for Children
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Multicultural Literature for Children Toolkit
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It is in the best interest of all students, including those from white, middle-class backgrounds, to have access to multicultural children’s literature. While a specific community might be homogeneous and lack diversity, the world that children will grow up to inhabit is not. White children need to read multicultural literature in order to improve their knowledge of the world and to improve their own critical thinking skills. If white children are not confronted with differing ideas and cultures, then they are at risk to have under-developed critical reasoning skills and lack the ability to connect with ideas from other cultures.
Moreover, it is ignorant to assume that white children will not feel a connection with multicultural literature. We expect children from minority cultures to connect with the characters and themes from Little House on the Prairie, Harry Potter, Charlotte’s Web, or The Phantom Tollbooth, so why is it unreasonable to expect white children to connect with the characters and themes from The House on Mango Street, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Esperanza Rising, or One Crazy Summer? Without access to multicultural literature, white middle-class children may develop the idea that their culture is the only one worth prioritizing. We need to teach our children to factor in other cultures into their worldviews.
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LIS 6711 Organization of Knowledge I
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An Exploration of Proposed Solutions to Rectify Biases in Knowledge Organization (KO)
The two most prevalent classification systems used in the United States, the Library of Congress system (LCC) and Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), were both invented in the late 1800s, a time where systematic and social discrimination due to race, gender, and sexuality were rampant. As products of their time, both of these classification systems included language in their subject headings and classes that creates biases within searches. While biases generally exist in every classification system, this paper focus on LCC and DDC as examples of this prevalent problem within Knowledge Organization (KO).
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Since the 1970s, beginning with Sanford Bernman’s influential book Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Heads Concerning People (1971), the field of knowledge organization has begun the process of identifying and correcting biased or discriminatory language in classification systems. However, there still seems to be much debate about how, and if, classification systems such as LCC and DDC should be modified in order to reflect upon 21st-century values and social consciousness. This paper will first discuss the ways in which classification systems are developed with biases and the implications of such biases, and then explore the various proposed solutions within KO to rectifying biases.
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LIS 6026 Archives and Records Management
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Repercussions and Ethical Issues of Twitter as a Presidential Archive
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Although social media may not be considered an archive in the traditional sense, there is no doubt that social media networks allow users to preserve, catalog, and archive information and ideas relevant to their lives and personal interests. Twitter, in particular, is an effective, if informal, method of archiving information while simultaneously sharing that information to followers. While there is much to examine regarding the ethical issues of Twitter as an archive, it is especially imperative that the Twitter accounts of national leaders be scrutinized as responsible archives. President Trump’s Twitter accounts have been the source of much debate since he has taken office, as he was the first president to take office with a pre-existing Twitter account (@realDonaldTrump) that he chose to maintain simultaneously with his official presidential account (@POTUS). The president has been accused of mishandling his authority of these unusual archives, as he deletes content and blocks users from accessing his personal account. When viewing these actions through the lens of the archival profession, it can be determined that these actions violate ethics regarding the weeding and disposal process as well as access to information.
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