Closing Keynote: What Does it Mean for Intellectual Freedom When our Library Vendors are Data Analytics Companies?
Session Type
Keynote Address
Start Date
26-4-2022 2:45 PM
End Date
26-4-2022 3:25 PM
Abstract
Library vendors are, more and more, data analytics companies. Data analytics companies don’t just sell traditional library products, like informational content and library services platforms to libraries and research institutions. They also sell personal data products, including predictive “risk” and “metrics” products to all sorts of decision-makers, from grant funders to law enforcement. When library vendors also sell products that depend on personal data, it raises privacy and intellectual freedom issues for libraries and researchers. In this discussion, we’ll take a look at the underpinnings of the data analytics business and talk about steps we can take to keep surveillance and data collection out of our library products and research resources.
Closing Keynote: What Does it Mean for Intellectual Freedom When our Library Vendors are Data Analytics Companies?
Library vendors are, more and more, data analytics companies. Data analytics companies don’t just sell traditional library products, like informational content and library services platforms to libraries and research institutions. They also sell personal data products, including predictive “risk” and “metrics” products to all sorts of decision-makers, from grant funders to law enforcement. When library vendors also sell products that depend on personal data, it raises privacy and intellectual freedom issues for libraries and researchers. In this discussion, we’ll take a look at the underpinnings of the data analytics business and talk about steps we can take to keep surveillance and data collection out of our library products and research resources.
Comments
Sarah Lamdan is a professor at CUNY School of Law. She also has a master's degree in library science and legal information management. Her research focuses on information law and policy. She researches and writes about information access, surveillance & privacy, and informational capitalism. Her book, Data Cartels is forthcoming from Stanford University Press. When she's not teaching, she works on data justice projects across the spectrum from open government to personal privacy. Sarah's a SPARC Senior Fellow and a faculty fellow at NYU School of Law's Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy. She's an IOI community council member and she also works with immigration groups on government surveillance issues.