A little presentation I made for my reference class last semester.
Forgive the poor sound quality.
Forgive the poor sound quality.
Showing posts with label Access to Information. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Access to Information. Show all posts
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Capitalism: The Double Edged Sword of Information
As much as capitalism has helped develop nations like India (and I know it has, I've read 'The World is Flat') it holds an interesting consequence when it comes to information access. I was reading this article today about the enormous "access to information" gap in developing nations. What I mean by that specifically in this case is access to journals related to health, medicine, science, technology - you name it. Credible, reliable, researched, and peer reviewed information that, if we believe the School House Rock adage "knowledge is power" (and I truly do) must be accessible to underdeveloped nations.
Anyway, there are many organizations like HINARI and AGORA, both mentioned in the quote below, that purchase journal subscriptions from large companies in order to distribute them to developing nations for free of a very low fee. The author points out an interesting problem when "commercial interest" comes into play:
"Also, in a few countries, publishers withhold some journals because the sales of these journals are significant in these countries.
Indeed, this is the case for India, which is excluded from HINARI and AGORA even though India’s per capita GDP is less than half of US$1,000, the threshold accepted by the publishers for these programs, simply because there are many institutional subscribers in India for many journals included in HINARI and AGORA. University and research institute libraries in various regions of India also belong to different consortia who sign different licensing agreements with different publishers that allow them access to some titles that are also available through HINARI and AGORA. So offering these programs to India would substantially undercut the subscription revenue publishers currently enjoy. It appears that profit motive prevails over the principle of true equity.”
I don't really know that I have a 'solution' to this issue, because truly, we ought to be valuing information and it ought to be expensive - it changes the world (we hope). I understand why they wouldn't want to give away what they are already selling. Companies have to be able to make a profit so they can continue to collect, publish, and disseminate good products...but groups like HINARI and AGORA are willing to pay...so why not just make a little less AND help the world?
Chan, Leslie, & Costa, Sely. (2005). Participation in the global knowledge commons: Challenges and opportunities for research dissemination in developing countries. New Library World, 106(3/4), 141-163.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Access as Warning?
ALA president, Jim Retting, had an interesting article about access in November's American Libraries Magazine. (Which you can now read online without being an ALA member - way to put your money where your mouth is ALA.) The article, Access for All, iss about the idea of access to information and how it requires a certain level of transparency in government.
Retting specifically mentioned the annual Crimea Conference, a library conference for Russian librarians, where access to information and government related information was discussed
"... [access to information] improved after the collapse of the Soviet Union but in recent years has reverted"
What? huh? Did you catch that? We've been hearing rumblings out of Russia for a while now and the relationship with our former cold war nemesis is starting to re-frost. Stories of political assassinations have led us to question their human rights stance, and, George Bush's ability to see into Putins 'good' soul through his Russian peepers not withstanding, Russia is scaring the West more than it has for some time.
Russia's political strangle hold on expression, denial of human rights, and many other nefarious doings are echoed in their attitude towards public access to information - or maybe the latter is one of the reasons they are allowed to continue with the aforementioned deeds.
In relation to oppressive countries' precedent of denying access to information Retting points out that "Most Westerners know about Tianenmen Square from the student movement but most Chinese don't know about that." That sounds bizarre to us, but that's because we live in a country with a robust press and the right to information. While I don't think that right was enumerated in the Bill of Rights, I think it should be at the forefront of any discussion of citizen empowerment and democracy. Citizens make better decisions when they have access to accurate information and governments are held more accountable when their doings are recorded, catalogued, and made available to their constituents.
When we go about determining who is in our new 'connect four' of evil, perhaps we should look not just at their nuclear arms proliferation, hostile public rhetoric, and alleged human rights abuses, but also how they deny access to information. Maybe examining trends regarding access to information, or the denial of such, could alert us of possible dangers before other, harder evidence is available.
Retting specifically mentioned the annual Crimea Conference, a library conference for Russian librarians, where access to information and government related information was discussed
"... [access to information] improved after the collapse of the Soviet Union but in recent years has reverted"
What? huh? Did you catch that? We've been hearing rumblings out of Russia for a while now and the relationship with our former cold war nemesis is starting to re-frost. Stories of political assassinations have led us to question their human rights stance, and, George Bush's ability to see into Putins 'good' soul through his Russian peepers not withstanding, Russia is scaring the West more than it has for some time.
Russia's political strangle hold on expression, denial of human rights, and many other nefarious doings are echoed in their attitude towards public access to information - or maybe the latter is one of the reasons they are allowed to continue with the aforementioned deeds.
In relation to oppressive countries' precedent of denying access to information Retting points out that "Most Westerners know about Tianenmen Square from the student movement but most Chinese don't know about that." That sounds bizarre to us, but that's because we live in a country with a robust press and the right to information. While I don't think that right was enumerated in the Bill of Rights, I think it should be at the forefront of any discussion of citizen empowerment and democracy. Citizens make better decisions when they have access to accurate information and governments are held more accountable when their doings are recorded, catalogued, and made available to their constituents.
When we go about determining who is in our new 'connect four' of evil, perhaps we should look not just at their nuclear arms proliferation, hostile public rhetoric, and alleged human rights abuses, but also how they deny access to information. Maybe examining trends regarding access to information, or the denial of such, could alert us of possible dangers before other, harder evidence is available.
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