Information Ethics and its Implications for Library and Information Professionals: A Contemporary Analysis
Information ethics provides an ethical framework for the information professionals for carrying out various information related works like acquiring, storing, processing and using of information. This has become vitally important in modern times, which has been dubbed as ‘information age’, because of the central role played by information in the socio-economic development of world nations. This also poses unique challenges for the library and information professionals, because the emergence of an ICT-driven information society has made their job much more challenging than before. This article explores the key questions related to information ethics and, in the light of codes of ethics promoted by national and international information organizations, discusses how information professionals could discharge their duties in an ethical and morally justifiable manner. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/pp.v51i1-2.17677
Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression
Most Americans take for granted that they live in an open society with a free marketplace of ideas, in which a variety of forms of expression and opinion flourish and can be heard. But as Herbert Schiller makes clear in Culture, Inc., the corporate arm has reached into every corner of daily life, and from the shopping mall to the art gallery, big-business influence has brought about important changes in American cultural life. Over the last fifty years the private corporate sector in America has steadily widened its economic, political, and cultural role both in the United States and abroad, and Schiller finds the effects alarming. Corporate control of such arenas of culture as museums, theaters, performing arts centers and public broadcasting stations, he argues, has resulted in a broad manipulation of consciousness as well as an insidious form of censorship. Artists with views antithetical to big business, for instance, find they are unable to show in corporate-sponsored museums and galleries. And what does reach the public eye is non-provocative, watered down so as to be palatable to the largest number of potential consumers. "Blockbuster" museum exhibits present art objects abstracted from their social and historical contexts, and, he maintains, serve primarily as commmercial promotions for the corporations whose banners and logos adorn the exhibit halls. But the cultural landscape is only one area of concern. Schiller points out that the suburban sites of social interaction-- malls and shopping centers-- commonly thought of as public spaces, are actually privately owned. Explicity designed for consumerism and inhospitable as true public meeting places, they act as little more than selling machines. Another conquered frontier, he points out, is the enormously expanded informational system of the last ten years, now owned and directed by a corporate handful. Not only is there massive concentration in the media sector, but information once dispensed and controlled by the government is now farmed out to private concerns, who turn once inexpensive information into a profitable commodity. Schiller also finds the dynamic of information commercialization at work in the nation's universities, where big-business support of research has led to a siphoning off of the findings for their own profit. A disturbing but enlightening picture of corporate America, Culture Inc. exposes the agenda and methods of the corporate cultural takeover, reveals the growing threat to free access to information both at home and abroad, and explains how the few keep managing to benefit from the many. This eye-opening book is for anyone concerned with preserving variety and choice.
MCNP(TM) Version 5.
The Monte Carlo transport workhorse, MCNP, is undergoing a massive renovation at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in support of the Eolus Project of the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASCI) Program. MCNP Version 5 (V5) (expected to be released to RSICC in Spring, 2002) will consist of a major restructuring from FORTRAN-77 (with extensions) to ANSI-standard FORTRAN-90 with support for all of the features available in the present release (MCNP-4C2/4C3). To most users, the look-and-feel of MCNP will not change much except for the improvements (improved graphics, easier installation, better online documentation). For example, even with the major format change, full support for incremental patching will still be provided. In addition to the language and style updates, MCNP V5 will have various new user features. These include improved photon physics, neutral particle radiography, enhancements and additions to variance reduction methods, new source options, and improved parallelism support (PVM, MPI, OpenMP).