Thinking about the ethical care of information, knowledge, culture, and what we do for societies over a very long time.

Joshua Chalifour

The hype over the last few months regarding generative AI has been quite interesting. I’ve facilitated a variety of discussions (and presented some) with faculty, staff, and other librarians regarding these tools and I’ve been following the public discourse. The thing that I keep coming back to and which I don’t feel gets the attention that it merits, is the potential to

 consider these newer AI systems, LLMs, etc.

Artificial Intelligence to Examine Us

A common way to model the relationships of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom is the DIKW pyramid. Starting with its base, each concept builds on top of the former. The gist is that we require data to form information † we use information to gain knowledge † and we use knowledge toward developing wisdom. This model is one doorway to understanding the relationship between these concepts.

Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom: Our Pragmatic Ignorance

Open data is a well-defined concept but in the public sector, there is some difficult work ahead for its digital curation. Although the support and production of open data from governments around the world varies (with many not yet supporting it at all) there are clear movements to encourage and grow open government data initiatives.

Digital Curation Issues Involving Open Government Data

This is the third part in a series of three posts.

Part 1 — The TPM Environment and Copyright Change from C-11 Part 2 — Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs

 Part 3 — Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal

Download the whole document (PDF). The Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) identifies five categories of appraisal criteria.

Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal

I’ve been reading the draft consultation version of the Canadian Digital Information Strategy (PDF). The strategy proposes strengthening content, ensuring its preservation, and maximizing its access and use. These are important for many reasons the report addresses regarding culture;

Some Notes on the Canadian Digital Information Strategy Draft

I’ve been thinking about something like an instance

 Community Pledge

becoming commonplace. Mastodon instances tend to post rules, user expectations, a tiny bit of info about administrative practices. This helps cultivate the Mastodon region of the fediverse. But, and I don’t mean the following as criticism, most instances have not communicated what their administrative commitments to their community are.

Could Mastodon Instances Make a Pledge to Their Communities?

As a librarian, I talk with other faculty and students about their academic work and the life-cycle of the research process. I’ve always stressed that open access is important for many reasons, including toward making research outputs available to people that otherwise wouldn’t be able to get them.

Talk about the Broad Value of Open Access

This morning, upon learning of the newly negotiated NAFTA or as it seems to be called now USMCA, I sent the following letter to ministers of the current Canadian government. I appreciate the very difficult and complex work involved in negotiating the new version of NAFTA with the USA and Mexico.

Letter to Ministers Regarding the New NAFTA / USMCA &amp; “Intellectual Property”

This is the second part in a series of three posts.

Part 1 — The TPM Environment and Copyright Change from C-11

 Part 2 — Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs

Part 3 — Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal Download the whole document (PDF). Archives face inexorable problems with the duty to preserve massive quantities of information, stored on frail digital media.

Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs

I’d been concerned with what I had once called digital cultural amnesia. Though in reflecting on the word “amnesia” I no longer think it’s the best way to express the problem. Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, writes about the phenomenon in

 The Observer

. She takes the personal analogue and raises it to a national level.

Ephemera and the National Memory

Recent copyright legislation prevents archives from legitimately fulfilling key requirements for the long term preservation and provision of access to digital fonds.

How Recent Copyright Legislation (C-11) and TPMs Prevent Digital Preservation

Communia published its

 Public Domain Manifesto

. The manifesto identifies the public domain concept with respect to historical development and more urgently, its relevance to culture today. I think it makes an important statement, in terms of offering a level, common understanding that could be used widely across society, government, and business.

First Take on the Public Domain Manifesto

Gautama Mehta’s recent article “Proposal to install spyware in university libraries to protect copyrights shocks academics” is an important read.

Publishers Proposing Surveillance Tech on Libraries

Sometimes we see headlines in the news about a book being challenged at a library. People from different perspectives might see the content of the book or other aspects of it as threatening or inappropriate. Understanding these challenges and forming responses is essential to our work as librarians in advocating and supporting intellectual freedom. Now, the work to track this information will receive more coordinated support.

Tracking the Challenges Made to Canadian Library Books

The processes and supports within an institution can, I’ve noticed, demand a bit of effort to change. When we speak of

 open scholarship

or

 open science

, many aspects tie-in or lead out from those concepts, which makes the whole prospect of institutional change quite complex.

Institutional Change toward Open Scholarship and Open Science

I first read an e-book a few years ago when I decided to see how War and Peace felt on my phone. Engrossing. And probably no less so than it is on paper. Now I like both paper books and e-books but the spread of e-books is about more than just enjoying them or not.

E-books: New Experiences and Problems with Access

Chroknowlogy

The processes and supports within an institution can, I've noticed,
demand a bit of effort to change. When we speak of **open scholarship**
or **open science**, many aspects tie-in or lead out from those
concepts, which makes the whole prospect of institutional change quite
complex. I'm very excited about the efforts so far that the Open Science
Working Group (of which I'm a participant) at Concordia University has
undertaken and accomplished. These include an initial report on
"[**Recommendations for Fostering Open Science at Concordia
University**](https://doi.org/10.11573/spectrum.library.concordia.ca.00992647)"
(DOI: 10.11573/spectrum.library.concordia.ca.00992647)

Of course, the Library is always doing outreach about open access (OA).
In the past I've organized activities, events, and
[projects](https://chroknowlogy.ca/intellectual-liberty/2022/talk-broad-value-open-access/){data-type="post"
data-id="64563"} for [open access
week](https://www.openaccessweek.org/). I can see how frequently our
modern research practices, which involve digital techniques are enabled
by the various forms of open: open source, open data, open protocols,
open access, etc. However, I've always found that it's a struggle to get
people's interest and that we have to be creative in order to educate
about OA issues. Part of what I suspect makes advocating for OA
difficult is the sort of singularity that comes from being "just the
library," the group that's always talking about it. So when this Open
Science Working Group formed, I was excited about its multidisciplinary
nature and that it included both students and faculty. I think that
really helps to broaden involvement across the university.

The working group, led by colleagues Krista Byers-Heinlein (who is also
Concordia University Research Chair in Bilingualism and Open Science)
and Nicolás Alessandroni, initiated the effort through a day-long
[conference on open
science](https://www.concordia.ca/cuevents/artsci/2022/05/27/open-science-concordia.html)
in 2022. Later they established the working group by inviting people to
participate in a workshop (there were over 20 people representing many
disciplines). The workshop operated through a modified form of DORA's
[SPACE
rubric](https://sfdora.org/resource/workshop-toolkit-to-introduce-the-space-rubric/),
which was designed for academic institutions to use toward improving
their policies. I think using that tool to organize such a large group
of people toward a practical outcome was extremely beneficial.

After more meetings, discussions, and revisions the working group was
able to produce a set of
[recommendations](https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/992647/)
to bolster open scholarship throughout the university. It addresses many
issues, including existing policies, outreach, inter-institutional work,
position principles, open education, resources, and more. Of course,
this is not the end of the process. Among other things, next steps
include focused discussions with department heads, administrators, and
others. I imagine that getting to a place where open scholarship/open
science is well-understood and hopefully a default institutional
position for research and education will require ongoing work.

The recommendations in the report tend to be specific within the context
of Concordia University but I felt it worthwhile to write about here
because the process, the findings, and the recommendations may be of
interest to others. Perhaps you would like to try something similar at
your institution? The Concordia work could be one model to reflect on
what would work well or not so well in your own context.
