Perspectives, Insights & Priorities: 17 Leaders Speak Freely of Librarianship (review)

Abstract

how people outside of organizations do most of the security checking for internally produced programs is pretty scary. The essays in Information Ethics in the Electronic Age originated as presentations at the “Ethics of Electronic Information in the 21st Century” symposium in 2002. They deal with the very serious ways in which, as editor Tom Mendina describes it, “information and information technology often seem to exceed, even contradict or oppose, the purposes of their creators” (2). In the pieces in section 1, “Africa,” these confl icts are invariably politically fraught: the commercial use of Indigenous knowledge in developing countries; the right of access to information for all; linking developing countries with the outside world; and the lack of infrastructure to support Internet development. Sections 2 and 3, “Information Organizations and the Handling of Information” and “Information Issues in the Post-Nine-Eleven World,” return to the more familiar territory of cybercrime, copyright, privacy, and educating information professionals about ethics and the electronic environment. Two thought-provoking contributions (curiously placed in different sections) are Douglas Raber’s “Is Universal Service a Universal Right?” and Alistair S. Duff’s “For a New Nanny State.” Both bring earlier discussions of civil liberties and responsibilities to bear on present-day issues.