The Australian performance artist Stelarc is a bit of an oddity in the contemporary art scene. Employing biocybernetic concepts and processes to his work, he is well-versed in creating hybridized forms that speak to ideas of human agency, informational interfaces, and digital capabilities in the modern world. His work primarily focuses on exploring “alternative anatomical architectures”[1] that touch on the psychological and physical limitations of the body and and technology. By means of video manipulation, surgical intervention, and robotic automation, the body becomes a medium of experimentation and an interface of interaction.

Stelarc conceives of his Prosthetic Head (Fig. 1) in such terms. The Head involves a digitally-rendered projection of the artist’s face programmed to interact with gallery visitors who talk to it via a central keyboard. Stelarc admits that he had envisioned the Head having speech and visual recognition capabilities, but technological limitations prevented these from being realized.[2]

Fig. 1. Stelarc, Prosthetic Head, 2003.

Instead of referring to the Head as an “Autonomous Agent”, Stelarc refers to it as an “Embodied Conversational Agent.”[3] While at first glance the head would seem to be firmly rooted in AI tradition, Stelarc does not create (nor intend to create) an independent subject. He has instead set up the digital architecture of his agent through ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) technology. Utilizing AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) the digitally-rendered bot formulates automatic responses based on user inputs.[4] Relying on the input of the user, Stelarc’s Head is less autonomous than it is reflective; as the artist himself has remarked, “the Prosthetic Head is only as intelligent as the person who is interrogating it.”[5]

The user’s textual interface with the Prosthetic Head is important here. The words typed out on the screen are only audible by the Head’s reiteration. Thinking in terms of Marcia Bates’s fundamental forms of information, this sets up an odd relational model. The user’s expressed information, following Bates, becomes embedded in the agent’s short-term database of information. Since the Head and the user are, after all, having a “conversation,” this information is reflected back onto the user, making our subjective experience of this information more apparent.[6] Marking an exterior focal interface, the reflection the user is faced with is something strange and alien yet, at the same time, familiar. According to Stelarc,

the human then is not something considered in-itself, but rather it it’s exteriority.[…]What is important is not essences and identities, but overlaps and interfaces. In this shift from essence to interface, we need to construct identity and awareness as external.[…]Self and subjectivity then is primarily an experience continuously being constructed externally, and remains open to change, inconsistency and contradiction. The subject does not define itself, but rather is defined by something outside of itself.[7]

The disembodied head becomes the prosthetic, digital embodiment of the user’s mind.

Stelarc attempts to find a new relational schema of the body and consciousness in this unfixed and undefined postmodern realm. He is essentially exploring the limits and potential of the human body, technology, and digital data. The Prosthetic Head is a bit different from previous projects, however, in that the physical body is completely eliminated, constructing this Head as a “body without organs.” Borrowing a concept from Gilles Deleuze, the body quite literally becomes a screen–a surface of random interplays and interactions that redefines the subject as more of a flowing process than a defined product.   In some ways, the user’s body becomes an extension (a prostheses) of the digital entity.

Stelarc takes a classical AI form that is “representational, rational, and disembodied”, but makes it function within a “reactive, situated, and embodied” subjectivity presupposed by Alternative AI.[8] The glaring deficiencies of the Head’s rational and automated aspects serves to devalue AI’s traditional hollow models of the human. However, in a point of departure from Sengers’s neatly laid out system, Stelarc downplays the importance of physical embodiment, therefore straying from some of postmodern AI’s conceptions that Sengers discusses.[9]

His artistic program as a whole revolves around the “post human.” Stelarc’s Prothesthetic Head explains that “the realm of the post human may not be in the realm of bodies and machines, but rather in the realm of autonomous and intelligent images, viral entities sustained in electronic media and the web.”[10] The human and mechanical body both perform within a context that constantly degrades them, and are therefore insufficient in expressing and performing essential functions. Gravity and friction break down the physical mechanisms of organic life, whereas electronic images and interfaces are not constrained by such physical processes.

The Prosthetic Head functions on the premise that human interaction is generally automated and unconscious. Its automated responses to user input may give the illusion of meaningful human-computer interaction, but this illusion is shattered in moments of disjunction, repetition, and outright weirdness. According to Julie Clark “Stelarc alludes to our self-controlled and regulated internal system as well as behavioral aspects that we remain unaware of which allows us to operate effectively as conscious beings, directed to the external environment.”[11] Discomfort and peculiarity in the interaction with this expressive image reminds the user that this “intelligent” agent is maybe not so intelligent after all.

Sengers mentions that “[o]ne of the dreams of AI is the construction of autonomous agents, independent artificial beings.[…]Autonomous agents would be more than useful machinery, they would be independent subjects.”[12] Although Stelarc’s project falls short of this dream (and this in itself problematizes the Classical AI that Sengers criticizes),  it does provide an interesting commentary on agency and identity in the context of omnipresent technology. It can even extend this line of thinking, showing the potential not for “living” machines, but for machines that reflect the “living,” mind back onto us, making us conscious of our unconscious modes of informational formation and transfer.

1. Marco Donnarumma, “Fractal Flesh–Alternate Anatomical Architectures: Interview with Stelarc.” http://econtact.ca/14_2/donnarumma_stelarc.html.
2. Stelarc, “Prosthetic Head: Intelligence, Awareness and Agency.” http://www.neme.org/252/prosthetic-head.
3. Stelarc, “Prosthetic Head.” http://stelarc.org/?catID=20241.
4. Artificial Intelligence Foundation, “An Introduction to A.L.I.C.E., the Alicebot engine, and AIML.” http://www.alicebot.org/about.html.
5. Stelarc, “Prosthetic Head: Intelligence, Awareness and Agency.” http://www.neme.org/252/prosthetic-head.
6. Marcia Bates, “Fundamental forms of information, ” in Journal of the American Society for Information and Technology 57(8): 2006, http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/articles/NatRep_info_11m_050514.html.
7. Stelarc, “Prosthetic Head.” http://stelarc.org/?catID=20241.
8. Phoebe Sengers, “Practices for a Machine Culture: A Case Study of Integrating Cultural Theory and Artificial Intelligence” Surfaces VIII: 1999, 20.
9. Ibid., 18.
10. “Stelarc’s Prosthetic Head on the Subject of the Post Human,” YouTube video. Posted by Pyewacket Kazyanenko, December 7, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nym8hfNI9Gg.
11. Julie Clark, “Stelarc’s Prosthetic Head. ”http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=491.
12. Phoebe Sengers, “Practices for a Machine Culture: A Case Study of Integrating Cultural Theory and Artificial Intelligence” Surfaces VIII: 1999, 10.

Isabel Rechberg and Jawad Syed’s paper “Ethical issues in knowledge management: conflict of knowledge ownership” highlights some important issues surrounding knowledge production and management within the corporate sphere. However, I wish they had expanded upon this topic further by asking what larger issues arise when we treat knowledge as a commodity? What are the potentials for violence in this system? Finally, I ask how approaching this issue from a library and information studies perspective can help to reframe the concepts of knowledge production, management, and consumption.

Rechberg and Syed’s paper emphasizes “the need for a moral contract of KM between organizations and individuals that is built on the ethical constructs of trust, fairness and justice, so that individuals are acknowledged as legitimate and foremost owners of knowledge, and are willing to participate in KM and enhance its effectiveness” (Rechberg and Syed, 2013). While I agree that it is important to protect the intellectual property of employees, I believe that the protection of the individual is paramount, and should not merely be a stepping-stone to a more streamlined knowledge production team for the company. It seems for Rechberg and Syed, the end goal is to provide a ‘safe space’ for knowledge production within the capitalist system in order to encourage “individuals to willingly participate in knowledge processes” (Rechberg and Syed, 2013). I would have loved to see Rechberg and Syed take their arguments one step further and discuss the ways that treating knowledge as a commodity alienates both producers and consumers, and is inherently detrimental to the knowledge production process. As the knowledge economy becomes further entrenched in the realm of Web-based production, the potential for exploitation is magnified. I look to Mechanical Turk as a prime example of this phenomenon.

Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s crowdsourcing marketplace, was established in 2005 with the goal of matching companies with individuals who bid on jobs that can only be completed by humans. Moshe Marvit’s article in The Nation, “How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine”, cites tasks such as detecting biases in an article, recognizing irony, and reading text out of photographs (Marvit, 2014). While on the surface this digital marketplace seemed like a perfect platform for matching companies with willing employees, it has actually become something of an Internet sweatshop, creating an unregulated labor market that is novel even within Western capitalist history. As Marx states:

            Even if the system of working remains the same, the simultaneous employment of a large number of labourers brings about a total change in the material conditions of the labour process. Buildings in which many are at work…which serve, simultaneously or otherwise, the purpose of many labourers, are now consumed in common. (Marx, 1867).

The Internet as a whole, and Mechanical Turk specifically, is the 21^st century version of the “buildings in which many are at work” that Marx speaks of, and a “total change in the material conditions of the labour process” has been the result. Given the fact that Mechanical Turk is centered on people performing tasks that computers cannot, I argue that this labor market is not just exploiting the labor of employees, but also their knowledge, both tacit and explicit. Mechanical Turk gives us a glimpse of a digital work environment centered on non-negotiable contracts, fierce competition, and free from minimum wage regulation, where individuals’ labor and knowledge are both exploited to frightening degrees. The question, then, is where do librarians fit into this violent new labor market? Is it possible to return a degree of agency to the knowledge production/consumption process?

Library and information professionals such as Christine Pawley have grappled with the complex relationship between production and consumption and have, in my opinion, crafted some solutions that are applicable to the Web-based knowledge market. Pawley’s “Information Literacy: A Contradictory Coupling” raises some important points regarding issues with the concept of information literacy as a whole, while also touching on the need to reframe the concepts of information production and consumption. Pawley discusses the need to develop “information literacy practices that situate all information users—not just scholars—at the center of processes of information production and recontextualization, thus hybridizing the identity of consumer-as-producer and producer-as-consumer” (Pawley, 2003). Pawley points to the need to reframe knowledge and information production/consumption not as dichotomous, but as one single, inextricably linked process. When we begin to recognize, as Pawley discusses, the idea of information as a process, not merely an item to be created by some and consumed by others, we can move information out of the realm of commodity. By participating in the both the information production and consumption processes, individuals are no longer subjected to the alienating effects of knowledge as commodity. As information and library professionals help to reframe this understanding of knowledge as an active process, individuals will be presented with the opportunity to escape the production/consumption dichotomy and the associated commodification of the “product”. It is in this way that I believe library and information studies can help to combat the negative aspects of knowledge production, management, and consumption in the corporate environment, and reintroduce a sense of agency to the process.

References

Marvit, Moshe. “How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine.” The Nation. The Nation Mag., 5 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.

Marx, Karl. “Capital: An Analysis of Capitalist Production.” Ed. Julian Borchardt. Capital. Ed. Max Eastman. New York: Random House, 1959. 64-65. Print.

Pawley, Christine. “Information Literacy: A Contradictory Coupling.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 73.4 (2003): 422-448. Digital.

Rechberg, Isabel, and Jawad Syed. “Ethical issues in knowledge management: conflict of knowledge ownership.” Journal of Knowledge Management 17.6 (2013): 828-840. Digital.

The problems with biases in Library of Congress subject headings have been examined for decades, and stir lively conversation whenever they come up. Emily Drabinski, in her essay “Queering the Catalog: queer theory and the politics of correction,” posits that many of these biases, as well as the hegemonic nature of the catalog itself could be “corrected” with what she calls “queer interventions” to the catalog. This would mean that a patron who discovers a problematic LOC subject heading (Drabinski uses the example of LGBTQ information being headed under “Deviant Sexualities”) would enter into a conversation with a librarian on staff, who would then explain to the patron the created nature of the catalog, while revealing that all knowledge organization systems are of course created by those with power.

Drabinski posits her queer intervention against the Library of Congress subject heading revisions and additions made popular by Sanford Berman. Berman, who began petitioning the LOC in the 1970s for additional and revised subject headings, is the most prominent figure in the “radical cataloging” movement. Drabinski argues that while such revisions are fine, they still work to maintain the hegemonic power structure of the catalog. The queer intervention, instead, would work to reveal and dismantle it. [1]

Several problems arise when we think of Drabinki’s queer intervention in practice. I want to point out two assumptions that I believe she operates under when she calls for librarians to perform queer interventions.  First have to assume that this library has a large enough staff to patron ratio to allow any given librarian to spend a large quantity of time in conversation with one patron, in order to explain the catalog’s history and problems. An over-stressed library staff may make both patrons and librarians uncomfortable broaching the subject of the catalog’s problems, as the queer intervention requires a long conversation, challenging historical assumptions of knowledge organization. It seems likely that at most public libraries, not enough resources and time are allocated to reference librarians so that just a few are expected to handle the needs of many patrons at a time. Both the librarian and patron in question would be unable to devote enough time to the conversation at hand. I think it’s also worth pointing out that public libraries, rather than private research or academic libraries, are the spaces where marginalized people are most likely to come into contact with the catalog; they’re also spaces where librarian resources are scarcest.

We should also ask ourselves about the identity and beliefs of the librarian in question performing the intervention. Of course, in order to perform a queer intervention on behalf of the catalog, the librarian that a marginalized youth approaches must believe in the necessity of the intervention itself–if he or she does indeed believe that LGBT topics should be cataloged under “Deviant Sexualities,” or information about Voodoo practices are rightfully found under the heading “Cults,” then obviously this person will not perform the intervention that Drabinski and other progressive librarians desire. The idea of an unchanged catalog maintained by librarians performing queer interventions requires all librarians in all areas of the country to be of one mind about progressive political issues; this seems wholly impossible to me.

Finally, we should examine the position of power that librarians themselves occupy within the queer intervention. While the catalog certainly represents codified power–and a faceless, non-human power at that, further mystifying it–librarianship, and the place behind the reference desk, is also a place of codified power. Librarians as a group are largely white, and the conventions of the profession necessitate that they at least present as middle-class, if not come from middle-class backgrounds in the first place. [2]

When performing the queer intervention, the librarian is already speaking across a gulf of power to a likely marginalized patron; in this relationship, a conversation about the catalog’s history and biases might ring at least slightly hallow, as the information is still largely one-sided and coming from a position of power. The act of the queer intervention also assumes that the patron has not contemplated the not-so-obscure idea that knowledge systems are in fact created by those with power; coming out of the mouth of a person with power, this is likely to sound condescending. [3]

I would like to posit that subject heading revisions made by Sanford Berman and others are a different type of queer intervention in a problematic catalog. While these revisions are perhaps not “queer” in the sense that they call into question or dismantle power structures, petitions to change LOC subject headings do indeed reveal the constructed nature of the catalog, especially if publicized. If it became clear to the public that subject headings exist, but are changeable by petition, then their “word-of-god” appearance would be reveled to be only human construction.  The library catalog exists to at least begin to help the patron in their research; I would like to think that interface with a progressive catalog during a powerful research process would be empowering to many.

Still, it takes a great deal of effort and time to change Library of Congress subject headings. As Berman himself pointed out, it wasn’t until 2006 that the heading “Vietnam Conflict” was changed to “Vietnam War;” he concluded that the change in such a useful heading lagging so far behind the reality of the war “should be a cause for embarrassment.” [4] The great deal of time that it takes to change these headings–sometimes decades–is likely to be extremely off-putting to a library patron who is used to public knowledge changing at the speed of Wikipedia.

Of course a conversation like the queer interventions that Drabinski advocates should always be welcome. I don’t feel comfortable advocating for them as the exclusive way to address a non-progressive catalog, as she does, however, as they rely on many factors outside of the progressive librarian’s control, and only enforce the power imbalance between patron and librarian. A catalog that is constantly under revision, in conjunction with open and honest dialogue with library patrons when possible, are the two complementary, rather than adversarial, ways of addressing the problem of bias in controlled vocabularies.

[1] Drabinski, Emily. “Queering the Catalog: queer theory and the politics of correction.” The Library Quarterly. Volume 83. Number 2 (April 2013): 94-111. Web Access.

[2] LIS 651-1 class discussion 9/17/15

[3] Galvan, Andrea. “Soliciting Performance, Hiding Bias: Whiteness and Librarianship.” In the Library with the Lead Pipe, 6/3/2015. Accessed on the web 9/29/15 <http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/soliciting-performance-hiding-bias-whiteness-and-librarianship/>

[4] Berman, Sanford. “Introduction: Cataloging Reform, LC, and Me.” Radical Cataloging: Essays that the Front. Edited by K.R. Roberto. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2008. Accessed on the web 9/29/15 <https://books.google.com/books?id=xoX2BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=queer+cataloging&source=bl&ots=36vb1XNFgs&sig=gzTBNkhGJ7UWAsN6w2heZPwa8aY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAmoVChMIkMy3ufOeyAIVCzo-Ch35FgaK#v=onepage&q=queer%20cataloging&f=false>

Pop Quiz!

True or False

 1. 57% of NYC homeless shelter residents are NOT African American. True or False.

2. The number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping each night in municipal shelters is now 78% higher than it was ten years ago. True or False.

3. Most people who have no income will NOT move in to city shelters. True or False.

Adapted from www.theguardian.com

BROOKLYN- I sight the large stone building on my aimless walks along the street. Its vastness and architecture seem to pull me close as I pass by daily, so finally I decided to venture inside. I looked up and saw the words “Brooklyn Public Library” sprawled across the top of the wide revolving doors and immediately I felt the need to enter and satisfy my curiosity. I held my bags with all my worldly possessions tightly as I attempted to brush the wrinkles out of my crushed clothes.

I looked around and saw others going in and out as I followed even though apprehension and fear gripped me under the arms and took over momentarily. I knew I was out of place as I looked at the people around me; no one else had three big bags, wrinkled clothes and messy hair. I looked myself over one last time in the glass doors as I hurriedly created a messy updo hairstyle and tried to perfect my best false smile. I stepped inside and the familiar environment calmed my nerves – except for a few puzzled glances for no one focused on me intently. I made eye contact with the librarian sitting at the front desk. She too had a quizzical expression on her face as her gaze followed me to my seat.

I placed my belongings all around me and as I started to shuffle through them to keep up my inconspicuous act, she started walking my way. My heart weighed heavily on my chest and my head started swimming with possible excuses and explanations. From my peripheral view her seersucker two-piece suit and bone straight hair personified rigidity and unkindness. She stopped at my table; her pursed lips and folded arms intimidated me while her piercing eyes judged me from head to toe.

No one chooses to become socially excluded instead society is the pedant for placing people into certain categories and stereotypes. As humans we strive to “belong” and “fit in” to society’s’ many classes and structures. But what happens when one falls short of theses groups? Do they get regrouped? According to Cronin, in John Gehner’s article, “Libraries, Low-Income People and Social Exclusion” apparently you do, hence his inclusion of latch-key children into the same group as the poor, the low-income, the masturbators, the homeless and the porn watchers.

 A library is not a community masturbation center. A library is not a porn parlor. A library is not a refuge for the homeless. A library is not a place in which to defecate, fornicate or micturate. A library is not a bathing facility. A library is not a dumping ground for latch-key children. (Cronin, 2002, p.39)

Libraries exist to serve the public whether or not a person is homeless, jobless, poor or unattended. A library is not a place to generalize people. A library is not a place to breech people’s civil rights. A library is not a place to put up institutional barriers. A library is not a place to exercise social exclusion. A library is not a place to practice discrimination. And the list of what a library should not be can continue (positive or negative) for pages and pages but lets stop and think about how we can structure libraries to be more “inclusive” of everyone. Because it’s when we start to exclude people that they become offensive and so do their actions.

Gehner attempts to suggest how libraries can improve their services to reduce those persons who are considered being the socially excluded. He points out that those who are considered ‘poor’ very often carry with them their belongings wherever they go, for example, to the library. At the same time, challenges and opportunities for these poor people differ from ‘state to state, from urban to metropolitan to rural’ and that is why every librarian should use their local knowledge to imitate meaningful changes. (See abstract above)

In his article, John Gehner proposed five actions for engaging low-income people. While I agree with all five points only two will be discussed further.

Action 2: Focus on the causes of social exclusion, not just symptoms.

In other words, “What is the root cause of this condition?” Gehner cites Bonnie Lewis who posits, “social exclusion is not simply a result of ‘bad luck’ or personal inadequacies, but rather of flaws in the system that create disadvantages for certain segments of the population….” (p. 42) Right now libraries are facing limited or diminishing funding so fees and fines represent alternative revenue. This places a burden on librarians and users, so much so that low-income users are subtly denied library access. Fees and fines signify for low-income, jobless and homeless patrons that they will never get the opportunity to overcome their situations since they struggle everyday to survive.

Action 3: Remove barriers that alienate socially excluded groups.

‘Breaking barriers’ describes a variety of factors that intimidate, alienate and otherwise discourage socially excluded segments of the community. They are subtle and insidious, and are ingrained in library culture.” (p. 43) This shows that teens find that libraries are too restrictive while immigrants and refugees confront an: ‘institutional culture….’ E.g. they cannot visit and socialize to which they have been accustomed. Gehner states that how we interact one-on-one with new patrons can make a profound difference. For example, “ do you offer a welcoming orientation or a bureaucratic exchange?” I want to think that, most libraries do not always foster a welcoming atmosphere for patrons. For individuals who would normally visit the library it is sometimes hard to get the librarians attention. Therefore when less fortunate individuals enter the library’s atmosphere tends to overwhelm them.

Engaging low-income people, jobless individuals and the homeless into the library structure is achievable following Gehner’s five proposed actions along with a librarians’ willingness to accommodate institutional changes.

References

Brooklyn Public Library. (2015), Grand Army Plaza. 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11238.

Coalition for the Homeless. (2015), The Catastrophe of Homelessness. Retrieved from http://www.coalitionforthehomelsee.org

Gehner, J. (2010), Libraries, Low-Income People and Social Exclusion, Public Quarterly, 29:1, 39-47.

Recently, “digital life after death” has been a hot topic, especially in relation to social media accounts (Swallow, 2010). If you do not want to worry about your social media pages becoming memorial walls full of weepy birthday wishes, there are a wide variety of resources out there than can help. Some social media sites have even unveiled internal solutions, like Facebook’s “Legacy Contact,” which allows you to select a trusted individual to create your final post, manage friend requests, alter and archive photos, etc., without logging in as you or, having access to private messages (Linshi, 2015). This phenomenon led me to ponder policies related to the way that libraries handle personal records of patrons, after the inevitable happens. Considering all of the strict policies related to the privacy of the living, I assumed that I would find similar standards in place for the records of deceased information-seekers; however, when I explored this idea, I found that this privacy need has been largely overlooked within many library systems.

Currently, I work for a 4-branch-wide public library, which operates within a consortium of 37 participating libraries; amongst this large community, there is not 1 policy in place for deceased patron records. When I brought this up to our circulation department head, I was told that the problem simply had not come up, but I strongly disagree. In my 3 years as an employee in this system, 2 co-workers and 2 familiar patrons have passed away. All 4 of their borrower records are not only available, but active, and easily viewable by any employee who is working within the catalogue. 1 of the accounts even has a note to library staff, announcing the death of a co-worker. Furthermore, upon the passing of the 2^nd deceased employee, our administration was contacted by a family member (via telephone, with no presentation of identification), asking for a copy of the employee’s ID, as he believed it to be a flattering photo of his late sister. Without hesitation, our director provided the photo. To me, these seem like questionable practices.

The Burley Public Library, in Idaho, reported similar occurrences: “’Over the years, we’ve had people request pictures of family members who have died, because the library happened to have the best picture of a family member,’ [Library Director, Julie Woodford] said, referring to pictures seen only by librarians in order to match the person checking an item out with the person who legally holds the library card.” BPL has also had patrons ask for the reading history of deceased family members, “to keep a family’s memories together” (Hunzeker, 2009). Interestingly, their reaction has been to explore the option of disclosing this information to those who ask for it. In 2009, their Board of Trustees was in discussion about a new policy that would freely release reading history to family members. No updates have been widely announced, to my knowledge. Presently, Las Positas College, in California, considers death an extenuating circumstance, which in itself, grants library employees permission to retrieve the full borrowing history of any patron. The policy states that employees may not request such lists for “idle curiosity, personal interest, or general monitoring,” but it also fails to elaborate on acceptable purposes (2015). It appears that, beyond a lack of policies, certain libraries are entertaining practices that would actually loosen privacy protection of deceased patron records.

Most libraries regularly purge records from their library management systems (including Burley Public Library, which mentioned that, while considering approval of the new policy, family members would still have to request reading histories prior to a systematic purge) (Hunzeker, 2009). The New York Public Library, which I frequent, has many transparent policies, when it comes to patron privacy. While there is no mention of how death may affect these policies, their deletion and purge processes are clearly stated. Similarly, at my current college, I was told that the issue of deceased patron records was irrelevant, as they regularly (at undefined intervals) purge their integrated library system records.

Although many libraries frequently dispose of their ILS records (other examples include Carlsbad Public Library and Paul Pratt Memorial Library), this does not represent the whole of information collected regarding patrons’ use of the library. At the public library where I am employed, we track every single time that a patron logs into a computer, we have research query forms, microfilm logs, Interlibrary Loan histories, program participation records, and so on. Of course, our computers also track internet activity, although I do not know to what extent that information is attached to individuals. The privacy of these records is protected at many levels (institutional, state, federal, etc), but in our case, those policies only protect the living. In response to Burley Public Library’s consideration of new privacy policies, Randy Stone, Burley’s City Attorney said, “People took the right of privacy far more seriously 25 years ago than they do now” (Hunzeker, 2009). This, to me, is laughable. As more aspects of our lives are prodded and tracked, for vast data collection, advanced by emerging technologies, privacy seems increasingly more important, and I do not personally understand the logic that releases these rights upon death; if the records live on, so must the policies that protect those who may be affected. I think that it is time that library policymakers take notice of this potentially unrealized need.

References

Carlsbad Public Library. (2015). Patron privacy & confidentiality policy. Retrieved from http://www.cityofcarlsbadnm.com/CPL-%20Patron%20Privacy%20&%20Confidentiality%20%20(2015).pdf

Hunzeker, D. (2009). A private matter?: Burley library to consider releasing readers’ reading history to family members. Magic Valley. Retrieved from http://magicvalley.com/news/local/minicassia/a-private-matter/article_b2bd01d7-93c1-50c8-8287-9c45b2864efb.html

Las Positas College. (2015). Library policy on confidentiality of library records. Retrieved from http://www.laspositascollege.edu/library/confident.php

Linshi, J. (2015). Here’s what happens to your Facebook account after you die. Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://time.com/3706807/facebook-death-legacy/

New York Public Library. (2009). Privacy policy. Retrieved from http://connect.nypl.org/site/PageServerpagename=privacypolicy&printer_friendly=1

Paul Pratt Memorial Library. (2006). Retention policy for Paul Pratt Memorial Library records. Retrieved from http://www.cohassetlibrary.org/policy_retention.html

PINES. (2013). Circulation policies and procedures manual. Retrieved from http://pines.georgialibraries.org/sites/default/files/files/PINES_Circulation_Policies_and_Procedures_Manual_v2013_08.pdf

Swallow, E. (2010). 7 resources for handling digital life after death. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/10/11/social-media-after-death/#uk3kkZ.mIgkF

Knowledge hoarding could well be the greatest barrier to well-functioning information-sharing systems in organizations, as well as in broader society. Isabel Rechberg and Jawad Syed mention this phenomenon in passing in their article Ethical issues in knowledge management: conflict of knowledge ownership: “Insufficient or inefficient reward systems may lead individuals to believe they are better off hoarding rather than sharing what they know.” Knowledge hoarding costs organizations money and time in retraining employees and recompiling information that employees would prefer to keep rather than share with colleagues and employers.

Rechberg and Syed recommend that organizations institute a “moral contract” with employees to encourage them to “willingly process knowledge” – an appealing yet abstract concept. A great deal of ink has been spilled as corporations seek concrete ways to encourage employees to share what they know. The Harvard Business Review attributes the expert employee’s impulse to hang on to experience-based knowledge – what they call “deep knowledge” – to “financial incentives, personal ego, discontent or frustration with the company.” The employee mentality could be summed up as – “what’s in it for me?” Why should an employee bother sharing knowledge that they worked hard to collect, if it won’t gain them money or prestige, for the benefit of colleagues who did nothing to earn the information?

HBR recommends that companies create a “knowledge transfer program” that will foster mentoring and teamwork, so that knowledge will never be concentrated in any single person, and make employees feel appreciated so that they will want to pay back their employer and leave a legacy when they depart. In the corporate context, then, employers have a clear plan of attack against knowledge hoarding – dismantle hierarchical work structures that make employees think they must keep their knowledge close to keep themselves from becoming irrelevant or less valuable; encourage mentoring and group work and set aside time for education; and provide encouragement and incentives for employees who share.

As Kenneth Husted and Snejina Michailova noted in an article entitled Diagnosing and fighting knowledge-sharing hostility, the impulse to hoard knowledge is an unproductive one, but it is also completely human and natural: “The decision to hoard knowledge is destructive from an organizational point of view but, at the same time, it is often rational and well-justified from the perspective of the individual.” People do not trust others with their hard-earned knowledge and do not want people to “freeload,” or they worry about being judged harshly if their knowledge is deemed incorrect.

These concerns are not limited to the corporate context, and neither is knowledge hoarding. How does knowledge hoarding manifest in the non-corporate world, for example in academia? How can we combat it and foster an intellectually open culture? Is it even realistic to think that we could overcome such ingrained human behaviors?

The first example of non-corporate knowledge hoarding that comes to mind is that of scientific research – researchers spend years of their lives obtaining funding and resources for their research, compiling data, and interpreting it. Being the first to conduct and publish cutting-edge research can lead to prestige and further funding to conduct even more cutting-edge research. It is reasonable that researchers would prefer to hang on to their ideas and data so that others cannot cut in. The fear of “knowledge parasites” is real.

It is all well and good for researchers (and the institutions that sponsor them with money and resources) to reap the rewards of their own hard work, to the exclusion of those who did not meaningfully contribute to it. But this culture of hoarding ignores the fact that research does not occur in a vacuum. It inevitably builds on discoveries that came before it, and collaboration among scientists can speed progress and increase the quality of the knowledge that is put out in the world for society’s benefit. This is the root of the recent trend toward open research databases that encourage researchers to make their findings, and in some cases the underlying data, publicly available. Indeed, the National Institutes of Health – a major grantmaker – has instituted a public access policy. With the stated goal of advancing science and improving human health, NIH requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to an open access repository.

As one example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently published a report on one NIH-funded repository, ClinVar, which compiles research on genetic mutations. ClinVar is meant to foster a more complete, unified perspective on the current state of research in this area. According to the NEJM study, no single laboratory can have the complete picture of genetic mutation research – indeed, individual laboratories possess varying and inconsistent data and, as one researcher remarked, “if private companies or single labs followed their own interpretation of variants, they’re likely to get it wrong.” Accordingly, NEJM found, “[h]ealthy competition among isolated entities is no longer sufficient to drive our understanding of human variation, and patient care may be compromised when data are not shared.” The best possible solution is for researchers to contribute to and learn from open databases rather than keeping data to themselves. No researcher is an island.

The trend toward open access databases is not limited to the sciences and is moving forward across disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences – although the sometimes slow pace of growth in participation is frustrating to many advocates. Just like in the corporate context, individuals are frequently unwilling to open up the knowledge they have worked hard to compile, and it can take considerable convincing and incentives for them to do so.

Individuals will always hoard knowledge when they think it is in their interest to do so. It is human nature. However, when openness and knowledge sharing make a true difference to a common good – for the success of an organization or for the growth of scientific knowledge – people have developed strategies to change individuals’ incentives and to combat knowledge hoarding. These strategies shift the information culture from one of individualism and personal knowledge ownership to one of collaboration and mentorship. Efforts like open access databases should eventually gain traction and show their worth in growing the quality and quantity of knowledge in the world, in a way that benefits both the original knowledge creators and a broader population.

References

Rechberg, I. & Syed, J. (2013). “Ethical issues in knowledge management: conflict of knowledge ownership.” Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(6), pp. 628–647.

Leonard, D. (2014). How to prevent experts from hoarding knowledge. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/12/how-to-prevent-experts-from-hoarding-knowledge.

Husted, K. & Michailova, S. (2002). Diagnosing and fighting knowledge-sharing hostility. Organizational Dynamics, 31(1), pp. 60-73. http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Snejina_Michailova/publication/247142520_Diagnosing_and_Fighting_Knowledge-Sharing_Hostility/links/02e7e51e051bacb293000000.pdf

Subbaraman, N. (2015, May 17). Want better science? Quit hoarding data, genetics researchers say. The Boston Globe.  Retrieved from http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/05/27/want-better-science-quit-hoarding-data-genetics-researchers-say/.

NIH Public Access Policy. (2014). Retrieved from https://publicaccess.nih.gov.

The concern for patron privacy is a tale as old as time. Well, almost. The Code of Ethics for Librarians, published in 1939, states “It is the librarian’s obligation to treat as confidential any private information obtained through contact with library patrons”. [1. “Midwinter Council Minutes,” American Library Association Bulletin 33 no. 2 (1939): 128–129.] It’s no wonder that when the Snowden controversy emerged in 2013 that the American Library Association took a stance. However, within 24 hours, that position wavered.

In 2013, Edward Snowden released thousands of classified government documents revealing NSA surveillance programs. The debate encompassing the controversy often begs the question – is he a hero, or not? Did Edward Snowden do the right thing? The ALA Council issued a resolution on June 30^th, 2013 supporting Edward Snowden. The resolution says that the ALA “recognizes Edward Snowden as a whistleblower who, in releasing information that documents government attacks on privacy, free speech, and freedom of association, has performed a valuable service in launching a national dialogue about transparency, domestic surveillance, and over classification”. [2. Resolution in support of Edward Snowden. (2013, January 29). Retrieved September 20, 2015.]

However, the next day on July 1st, the resolution was revised and took out any mention of Edward Snowden.  The new resolution urges the United States Congress and Obama to “reform our nation’s climate of secrecy, over classification, and secret law regarding national security and surveillance” and “reaffirms its unwavering support for the fundamental principles that are the foundation of our free and democratic society”. [3. ALA Council passes resolution on whistleblowers; government transparency. (2013, July 2). Retrieved September 22, 2015.] While the core ideas of privacy remain, the choice to remove any mention of Edward Snowden in the revised resolution has not gone unnoticed.

Why, in the matter of a day, did the American Library Association revise their position? The idea, the “myth”, of neutrality comes to mind. Robert Jensen makes it very clear in his article The Myth of the Neutral Professional that neutrality is impossible. You will always have a stance on any issue – even not taking a stance, actually, is a stance in itself. Yet, the ALA seems a little shaky on taking a non-neutral standing when publicly supporting Edward Snowden. Perhaps supporting him would have been too controversial. Maybe it would have been crossing the political lines too much. Possibly, supporting whistleblowers is great in theory, but not when it applies to an individual’s personal case. Whatever the true reason, the ALA focused their resolution more so on the importance of privacy as a whole and swept Edward Snowden under the rug.

Regardless of their seemingly “neutral” opinion of Snowden (though, we know in reality it isn’t neutral at all), the ALA has not had such a wavering stance on all controversial subjects. The ALA is extremely vocal in regards to patron privacy, especially when it comes to the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001. Before the Patriot Act, 48 states had laws protecting library users’ information, including search histories and circulation records. Information would only be released if there was a court order. [4. England, D. (n.d.). The patriot act and library records. Retrieved September 22, 2015.] After the Patriot Act (particularly Section 215) was signed into law, that information was easily accessible to government agents. “Third-party holders of your financial, library, travel, video rental, phone, medical, church, synagogue, and mosque records can be searched without your knowledge or consent, providing the government says it’s trying to protect against terrorism”. [5. Roller, E. (2013, June 7). This is what section 215 of the patriot act does. Retrieved September 28, 2015.]

It did not take long for the ALA to get involved. ALA President Barbara Stripling (role served 2013-2014) says in a 2013 open letter to members of the organization:

“When we [the ALA] spoke out in 2001 against the passage of the PATRIOT Act, we were concerned about Section 215, a provision of the law that allowed the government powers to obtain ‘business records and other tangible things’ from suspected terrorists. We were fearful that the government would come into libraries without warning and take library records on individual patrons without reasonable suspicion. Libraries were one of the first groups to publicly oppose the bill, and many legislators and privacy experts have noted that Congress would not have understood the chilling impact on privacy if librarians had not brought it to the nation’s attention. Librarians were so vocal in their opposition to the law that Section 215 was called the ‘library provision.’ We could not have imagined then what is happening today. Today, in spite of the leak allegations, the government continues to use the ‘library provision’ to vacuum up private communication records of Americans on a massive scale.”[6. Wright, J. (2013, July 11). ALA president Barbara Stripling: “Our country needs to find the right balance”. Retrieved September 22, 2015.]

In 2001, the ALA teamed up with the American Association of Law Libraries and Association of Research Libraries to write a letter to Congress voicing their concerns about the Patriot Act. These concerns included the expansion of access to business records, education institution records, and the expansion of trace devices to the Internet. [7. Library community statement on proposed anti-terrorism measures. (2001, October 2). Retrieved September 22, 2015.] In 2003, the ALA issued “Resolution on the USA Patriot Act and Related Measures That Infringe on the Rights of Library Users” [8. Resolution on the USA Patriot Act and Related Measures That Infringe on the Rights of Library Users. (2003, January 29).] and later “Resolution on the USA Patriot Act and Libraries” in 2005. [9. Resolution on the USA Patriot Act and Libraries. (2005, June 29)] The American Library Association has not remained silent when it comes to the Patriot Act. Far from it.

As of June 1^st, 2015 Section 215 of the Patriot Act has expired. Thankfully. Even better, on June 2^nd, 2015 the USA Freedom Act was signed into law (and librarians rejoiced!). The Freedom Act, loudly advocated for by the ALA, would limit the scope of information the NSA and government agents could receive. [10. How does the freedom act affect nsa surveillance. (2015, June 3). Retrieved September 22, 2015] It definitely would not solve all of our privacy concerns, but it is a step in the right direction.

With the amount of advocacy against the Patriot Act and for patron privacy, it doesn’t make sense why the American Library Association revised its June 2013 resolution and removed its public support for Edward Snowden. It seems hypocritical to advocate against the Patriot Act, and not openly support Snowden. The reasoning behind it is undoubtedly political. The ALA has been decidedly non-neutral in their position of patron privacy, and should proudly advocate for those that have helped to further that cause.