Technologies of Surveillance

Background

The Technologies of Surveillance Working Group was formed at the end of the 2017 DLF Forum by Yasmeen Shorish and Shea Swauger. This group came out of the Surveyance or Surveillance? Working Lunch at the Forum and is dedicated to interrogating our relationships with data collection technologies. Libraries are increasingly investing in systems that can track and correlate user behavior.

This group will interrogate the methods and ethical implications of these technologies and seeks to establish guidelines for how to operationalize interrogation of technology, whether in systems that we create or purchase, or through our classroom instruction. To that end, we propose an initial three sub-groups to look at the following areas:

Library-led Systems

This sub-group investigates the systems that libraries create, such as open source repositories.

Vendor Supplied Systems

This sub-group investigates the systems that libraries purchase or lease, such as an ILS or database.

Instruction and Outreach

This sub-group investigates effective outreach and instruction strategies for our communities on topic related to data collection and privacy.

Get Involved

Feel free to join our DLF-administered listserv. We also have a Slack space set up, with channels for each of the subgroups. Email Shea Swauger to gain access to the Slack space.