by Matt Lee
Quick Summary
This year’s Library Technology Conference featured two keynote speakers who encouraged us to proactively engage with the technology we sometimes take for granted. You can find recordings of both talks on the libtechconf.org website.
This year’s Library Technology Conference featured two keynote speakers who encouraged us to proactively engage with the technology we sometimes take for granted. You can find recordings of both talks on the libtechconf.org website.
Safiya Noble of UCLA presented “The Politics of Online Information: Algorithmic Ethics and Big Data(bases) in Libraries.” Dr. Noble discussed the consequences of knowledge management as propagated by for-profit companies and the algorithms they employ and missions they serve. She provided powerful examples – from Google searches for “black girls” that return mostly porn, to the manifesto of a mass murderer that relates his errant Internet research to his growing disaffection. As librarians, Noble believes that we must reject neutrality and acknowledge bias; we must resist black box technologies and embrace open source; we must curate the indexable web; we must eliminate technology over-development and e-waste; and we must fight the corporatization of libraries.
Andromeda Yelton presented “The Architecture of Values.” Ms. Yelton highlighted how privacy and confidentiality are central to library values, but may go unprotected in our technology-enabled services. She began with a very accessible introduction to the “https” security protocol and demonstrated how easy it is for anyone to monitor Internet use when it’s not employed. She went on to detail potential insecurities in self-check machines, vendor database account systems, and ILSs. How we protect our systems and our users is a technical and a value question, according to Yelton, and we need multiple people from within an organization working together to answer it.
