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Kay Mathiesen - Group Rights to Control Information versus Individual Rights to Access Information

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Program Description:

Intellectual Freedom is the core value of the Library and Information Profession. As the American Library Association puts it, "In a free society individuals are free to determine for themselves what they wish to read." Recently, the Draft Protocols for Native American Archival Materials put forward a number of principles for Archives and Libraries that would restrict such access. According to the Protocols, "Native American and other Indigenous communities' knowledge can be collectively owned and access to some knowledge may be restricted as a privilege rather than a right." More broadly, Article 31 of the Draft Declaration the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that, "Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain [and] control their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions." The intellectual freedom of individuals to access "what they wish to read" appears to be challenged by such claims to limit access to information based on group rights. This talk explores these possible value conflicts between indigenous people's rights to control their cultural information and the individual's rights to freely access information. Arguments for and against such group rights to control access to cultural information will be discussed and evaluated.

School of Information Resources & Library Science, The University of Arizona
1515 East First Street, Tucson, Arizona 85719 U.S.A.
Tel: (520) 621-3565 E-mail: sirls@email.arizona.edu URL: http://www.sir.arizona.edu
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