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

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. Perhaps
because until recently things have been on a smaller scale & practices
are maturing.

Here is what I've been considering. It's a thought process but not at
all, thought-out. There are problems but I'd like to put the idea out
there in case others have worried about this and perhaps, something can
come of it. This is written in 500 character paragraphs because I was
originally going to thread it in
[Mastodon](https://social.coop/@owlyph/109301118653885466){data-type="URL"
data-id="https://social.coop/@owlyph/109301118653885466"} but it got too
long.

What happens if an instance owner suddenly disappears? Radically changes
their stance on how the instance operates? Chooses to block federation
from other instances that many people have active connections to?

I think a Mastodon-style federated instance has unique responsibilities
to the members of its community. Mastodon instances could be owned and
operated by an individual or group of individuals, a coop, a commercial
entity, a not-for-profit sort of entity (e.g. professional org, NGO,
etc.), an institution (educational or government), among others. Each
has its reasons. Administering these communities isn't like owning
another type of website, where control can be mostly absolute.

Participants in Mastodon communities are building relationships that
feed into their personal, professional, or other contexts. We've all,
together, nurtured our instances' communities and feel a bit of, I
dunno, pride/joy/ownership/belonging? (else why do people fret about
choosing/moving instances?). **Since the protocol interconnects these
communities, I think administrator responsibility isn't just local but
extends along the lines of people's connections to other
communities/instances**.

Admins ready to reckon with what they'll pledge to their community,
could build better communities. A pledge might, for example include: 1
contingency procedures if the instance were to shut down (backups,
infrastructure, funding, death/disappearance?). 2 Federation approach
(rationale, why/why not specific instances federate, process for
notifying & ideally, consulting with users when a new instance may be
blocked).

Example 3, Clarity on other decisions (all decided by single admin? are
moderators participating? can others become moderators and if so, what's
the process? formal decision-making structure? outside factors like
people or organizations that could exert influence on the decisions?) A
few of these examples are built into the
[social.coop](https://social.coop/terms/) model and some other
instances.

What can users expect from participating in a community? Upon signing up
we know what is expected from us but not the other way around. I don't
think an admin should be forced into offering a pledge. But I imagine
eventually something unpleasant will happen, in which people lose their
service, become disappointed, or regret being a part of an instance, and
that will all federate too. A pledge from the admin, if not enforceable,
might help set expectations or influence reflexive responsibility.
