Presentation to the 2019 Taxonomy Bootcamp

1. The Ethics of Structured Information
Taxonomy Bootcamp
Nick Poole, Chief Executive, CILIP
16 October 2019

2. The truth is that we are neither online nor offline
but onlife, that is, we increasingly live in that special
space that is both analog and digital, both online
and offline. An analogy may help. Imagine someone
asking whether the water is sweet or salty in the
estuary where the river meets the sea. That
someone has not understood the special nature of
the place.
The consequences of such radical transformation are
many, but one is particularly significant and rich in
consequences: what is the human project we should
pursue in designing the mangrove society?

3. We can’t trust the platforms
We can’t surrender the ‘human project’ Floridi describes
to the platforms, not because they are corporate
entities, but because their mission is dangerously lop-
sided and their power is disproportionate to their
viability.
If you regard human choice as inefficient, and you focus
your technological might on removing inefficiency from
the system, eventually you undermine democratic agency
and - ultimately – free will.
That’s a lot to ask in return for some cat videos.

4. Why ‘ethics’….?
To reach for ethical distinctions and to seek to categorise experiences and objects are two fundamentals of the
human condition – any ‘human project’ to design a future in which people move seamlessly between contexts must
account for both.
Any professional community must have at its heart a commonly-expressed set of ethical principles, norms or values. It
is the values and ethics of a profession that distinguish it more explicitly than their skills.
• Meta-ethics – exploring the origin and meaning of ethical principles
• Normative ethics – exploring moral judgements & the criteria for “right” and “wrong”
• Applied ethics – the application of ethical principles to human activity

5. When we're dealing with structured information I think we are asking a combination of questions about
normative and applied ethics - what are we doing when we selectively filter information, structure and organise
it and make it available for re-use? Are we doing it in good or in bad faith? Do we know whether the results are
right or wrong, good or bad? Do we even think about this or are we too busy to care?
By what right do we go about the business of structuring and organising information and do we know whether
what we are doing is empowering or disempowering others. How do we ensure that ‘ethics’ isn’t just another
frame which legitimises dominant groups at the expense of disempowering others?
Do we need a new frame of reference which is less about the cataloguer applying models and solutions and
more about empowering the information user?

7. 1. The world is made of information

8. 1. The world is made of information
2. Every decision we make about information is a filter

9. 1. The world is made of information
2. Every decision we make about information is a filter
3. No filter is neutral

10. 1. The world is made of information
2. Every decision we make about information is a filter
3. No filter is neutral

11. Rebuilding Notre Dame from 50bn data points
Following the devastating fire in ‘The Forest’ of
Notre Dame de Paris, French 3D Modelling
company AGP were asked to assemble a digital
reconstruction based on 50bn data points acquired
through lasergrammetry and photogrammetry.
The model isn’t just an image, though – it’s a BIM
(Building Information Modelling) dataset which
combines point-cloud scans with integrated
information for each architectural element, including
materials, date of construction etc.
Engineers and builders will use the dataset to re-
create the original fabric of the building from
information captured in 2016.

12. Justice for Grenfell
An international collaboration through Forensic
Architecture are using a combination of media archiving,
data analytics and building information model to create
a realtime reconstruction of the tragedy at Grenfell
Tower.
Similar projects are crowdsourcing information assets to
seek justice, clarification or closure relating to a whole
range of human events, from political assassinations to
illegal detentions and chemical warfare.
www.forensic-architecture.org

13. It from Bit
But here's how physicist Paul Davies, director of BEYOND: The
Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State
University, frames the question:
"Historically, matter has been at the bottom of the explanatory chain,
and information has been a sort of secondary derivative of it," Davies
said. Now, he added, "there's increasing interest among at least a
small group of physicists to turn this upside down and say, maybe at
rock bottom, the universe is about information and information
processing, and it's matter that emerges as a secondary concept.“
In this view, the growth of data and information isn’t a growth in the
application of data to the material world, it is a gradual discovery of
the data and information that are inherent in the material world. We
aren’t creating complexity, we’re gradually revealing it.

14. Let’s be unafraid of the future
A lot of the concern about AI, machine learning and
data analytics is predicated on the idea that we’re
standing, passive and still, while these technologies
are hurtling towards us.
But we’re not standing still. Every day, we’re
adapting, learning, testing boundaries, establishing
norms, exploring possibilities. We’re in the earliest
days of an impossible revolution in our capability
and agency as human beings – there is nothing in
our history to suggest we cannot adapt and
encompass.
As information professionals, we have a new job to
do – ensuring that the future is human-centred.
Copyright @Askkell 2019

15. When we classify, organise or structure
information, it isn’t something abstracted from
reality – we are organising reality. In practice, this
is an assertion of power.
(No pressure…)

16. 1. The world is made of information
2. Every decision we make about information is a filter
3. No filter is neutral

17. There are no ‘clean’ collections
Collecting is synonymous with the exercise of
power. It is always asymmetric – there is the
collector and the collected. Someone has made a
conscious choice about what to collect and what to
leave behind.
The past 20 years have seen a profound shift, from
‘selfish’ institutions whose success is measured in
terms of what they own or contain to ‘generous’
ones whose success is measured in what they share,
release or empower.
Where is your institution in this?

18. Rediscovering indigenous knowledge protocols
Mukurtu is a content management system and
digital archiving tool built for and in ongoing
dialogue with indigenous communities.
“The colonial collecting mission has left a living
legacy of cultural materials that are displaced from
their home communities and often-times contain
wrong, misleading, derogatory, or offensive
metadata, that gets continually and endlessly
circulated once those collections are digitized, put
online, and then scraped up by aggregators.”
Kimberley Christen
Director, Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation
Washington State University

19. Rediscovering indigenous knowledge protocols
Mukurtu is a content management system and
digital archiving tool built for and in ongoing
dialogue with indigenous communities.
“The colonial collecting mission has left a living
legacy of cultural materials that are displaced from
their home communities and often-times contain
wrong, misleading, derogatory, or offensive
metadata, that gets continually and endlessly
circulated once those collections are digitized, put
online, and then scraped up by aggregators.”
Kimberley Christen
Director, Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation
Washington State University

20. Rediscovering indigenous knowledge protocols
Mukurtu is a content management system and
digital archiving tool built for and in ongoing
dialogue with indigenous communities.
“The colonial collecting mission has left a living
legacy of cultural materials that are displaced from
their home communities and often-times contain
wrong, misleading, derogatory, or offensive
metadata, that gets continually and endlessly
circulated once those collections are digitized, put
online, and then scraped up by aggregators.”
Kimberley Christen
Director, Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation
Washington State University

21. Rediscovering indigenous knowledge protocols
Mukurtu is a content management system and
digital archiving tool built for and in ongoing
dialogue with indigenous communities.
“The colonial collecting mission has left a living
legacy of cultural materials that are displaced from
their home communities and often-times contain
wrong, misleading, derogatory, or offensive
metadata, that gets continually and endlessly
circulated once those collections are digitized, put
online, and then scraped up by aggregators.”
Kimberley Christen
Director, Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation
Washington State University

22. We may outsource the labour, but we can’t outsource accountability
It is not algorithms per se that are racist, misogynist, prejudicial
or inherently biased towards punishing the poor – that happens
as a product of bad data modelling, bad selection of datasets,
bad configuration, bad oversight of the outcomes and a lack of
foresight in understanding that data is a mirror to and
amplification of the biases inherent in ourselves.
We can hand the computational heavy-lifting to the machines,
but we can’t hand them accountability for the outcomes and
consequences – that rests always with us.
This is data citizenship.

23. The ‘human project’ is a process of selection…
We filter things when we:
• Collect them
• Document them
• Describe them
• Classify them
• Add them to systems
• Digitise them
• Share them
• License them
• Preserve them
• Deaccession or delete them
• Forget them

24. 1. The world is made of information
2. Every decision we make about information is a filter
3. No filter is neutral

25. As information professionals, we believe in the
power of information to change lives for the better.
We are motivated by the promotion and
protection of intellectual freedom and freedom
expression. This is a profoundly political worldview.

26. “The power to name is indeed a power. It is a
vastly effectual power that those with privilege are
always hard-pressed to cede.”
“A lot’s in a name, Romeo”, April Hathcock, 2016

27. The problem with ‘knowledge organising systems’
Issues with the Library of Congress Subject Headings
(LCSH) are widely-documented – because any knowledge
organising system represents an attempt to pin meaning
and identity into a structure when they are inherently
intersectional, chaotic and changeable.
Efforts by critical cataloguers like Sandy Berman, Netanel
Ganin, Jenna Freedman and April Hathcock to secure the
inclusion of ‘white privilege’ in the LCSH demonstrate what
happens when the outcomes of rules-based systems have
profoundly political implications.
Similar, the removal and subsequent re-inclusion of ‘illegal
aliens’ demonstrates that no knowledge organising system
that is owned by an institution is immune from political
interference.

28. The “straight white American man” assumption
Knowledge organising systems are – almost by definition – normative. They are ‘owned’ and hence will
reflect the normative bias of their owner.
In her talk at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in HE, Amanda Ros describes one example:
“One example of bias is subjects containing the word “astronauts.”
Women are designated with “Women astronauts” and “African American women astronauts,” but there is no
subject heading for male astronauts. A book about astronauts who are men would have the general subject
“Astronauts,” unless the racial identity prompted the use of a subject like “Hispanic American astronauts” or
“Indian astronauts.” Likewise, a book about Russian astronauts would have a geographic subdivision added:
“Astronauts – Soviet Union” instead of “Russian astronauts.”
Without gender, race or geographic qualifications, “Astronauts” can be assumed to mean white American
men in terms of library subjects."

29. A challenge from Queer Theory
“Viewing knowledge organising systems from a queer perspective, however, challenges the idea that
classification and subject language can ever be finally corrected.
Engaging queer theory and library classification and cataloguing together requires new ways of thinking
about how to be ethically and politically engaged on behalf of marginal knowledge formations and identities
who quite reasonably expect to be able to locate themselves in the library.
Queer theory invites a shift in responsibility from cataloguers positioned to offer functional solutions, to
public services librarians who can teach patrons to dialogically engage the catalogue as a complex and
biased text, just as critical cataloguers do."
- Emily Drabinski, Queering the Catalogue: Queer Theory and the politics of correction
Should we stop trying to ‘fix’ the problem of complexity and identity as knowledge organisation questions
with solutions and look instead to empower users to use catalogues critically?

31. Our experience is subjective,
nothing is neutral. The best we
can do as information
professionals and technologists is
to be self-aware, reflective,
critical, transparent about our
biases, willing to be accountable
for them and open to learning &
change.

32. There are some tools which can help us navigate
the ‘mangrove society’ successfully

33. Professionalism
Our sector is defined by a combination of continuity
of values and purpose alongside perpetual change
in the formats we manage, the services we deliver
and the skills we need to do it.
The new CILIP Ethical Framework is simplified,
updated but essentially backwards-compatible with
the foundations of librarianship & information
science.
http://www.cilip.org.uk/ethics

34. Openness
Open standards, open content, open knowledge, open licenses – any filter
we apply should be documented, reversible, verifiable, transparent and
accountable (not just for today, but accountable to future cataloguers and
users).
Open standards and open knowledge are not a ‘magic bullet’ to solve the
problem, but they are an essential part of being accountable for it.
They also offer the model that is most compatible with the public task of
our institutions. It is the combination of continuity of values and
accountability which legitimises our position of trust in a digital society.

35. Information Literacy
Information Literacy, defined as “The ability to think critically and
make balanced judgements about any information we find and
use. It empowers us as citizens to reach and express informed
views and to engage fully with society.”
In thinking about promoting intellectual freedom and freedom of
expression, and keeping people safe from online harms, education
will always scale better than regulatory intervention or technical
prevention.
In Floridi’s ‘mangrove society’, in which activities are no longer
bounded by format or place and are living ‘onlives’, information
literacy is a survival skill.
www.infolit.org.uk

36. Empathy
Cataloguing is an act of empathy – with the item, with its context,
meaning and purpose, with the creator, the potential user and the future
cataloguer or librarian.
Empathy – the ability to form a mental picture of the world as it appears to
someone else and to seek to understand their experience of it – is the
foundation of democracy, inclusion, tolerance and respect.
When we are creating, selecting or applying a knowledge organising
system, we have to be empathetic with the needs of future generations.

37. “What is the human project we should pursue in
designing the mangrove society?”
We have an ethical responsibility as information
professionals to ensure that our design for the
information society is predicated on universal
empowerment. Because that’s what our profession
is for.

38. In designing the future of our information-based
society, we must be open, we must be bold, we must
be fallible and we must be unafraid
Nick Poole, CEO, CILIP
www.cilip.org.uk/ethics
@NickPoole1