Competency A

Ideally, Intellectual freedom (IF) is the constitutionally protected right to interact with information without restriction. People can seek, receive and communicate any information. In practice, however, some information is not protected. Obscenity, child pornography, defamation and fighting words are currently restricted by Supreme Court rulings and legislation: Miller versus California 413 U.S. 15 (1973), Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (updated in 2008 as the PROTECT Act), New York Times Co versus Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) and Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942) respectively (United States Government Publishing Office, 2017).

Intellectual freedom is personally relevant to me because of the epistemological question: How can you know what you do not know? Intellectual freedom encourages discourse, disagreement and growth. From a history-centric view, the information we think is immutable is just as likely to be false. People were certain Earth was the center of the solar system. They knew beyond doubt that bad spirits caused infection. So, my interest in intellectual freedom is akin to fascination with my state of ignorance—I cannot know which information will be reversed as some new scientific observation or instrument shows us that we were just plain wrong: Evidence is viewed through biased filters. This perception-agnostic perspective extends to my political, religious and economic beliefs. I accept that I may be, in fact am likely to be wrong on all counts. Intellectual freedom secures the environment for exploration and the mistakes necessary for growth.

The librarians’ job is to connect users to information without restriction. We do not judge it as truth or alternative fact because users interact with information as they wish. Another term for restriction is censorship. In public institutions censorship manifests in four ways: restriction, redaction, relocation and removal (Knox, 2017). The idea of intellectual freedom permeates American life. To illustrate the pervasiveness of IF for example, the American Library Association and others are aggressively lobbying congress to preserve open internet access. Conversely, libraries are required to filter internet access to receive federal funding.

The social justice tac on intellectual freedom is also an active perspective. According to some, to censor is to exert power over another, usually less fortunate person or group (Knox, 2017). Censors assume the position of being right and others; wrong. According to the American Library Association (ALA), censors “wish to ensure that society has the benefit of their perception” (2007). The ALA points out that would-be censors and their opposition must be protected because if one is restricted today, the other may be restricted tomorrow (ALA).

My volunteer experience as an art teacher exercised the principle of intellectual freedom more than any of my other experiences or MLIS classes. The elementary aged children did not restrict their communication, and sometimes that was a problem for dissenting classmates. I learned to validate all beliefs. One way to open the classroom to opposing viewpoints was, ironically, to say that all beliefs are welcome, but we would be focusing on the materials; cold clay, wet paint, sticky wax. We could use those things to express beliefs, feelings, ideas, but were not going to restrict our classmates’ thoughts by exposing them to social ridicule. My goal was to set a tone: That in my class, we value intellectual freedom balanced with ethical behavior towards each other.

The coursework that most directly supports competency A is LIBR 200; Information and Society. It prepared my understanding of ethics and values by providing foundational readings from texts such as Foundations of Library and Information Science by Rubin, 2010 and The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts by Haycock and Sheldon, 2008. The subsequent class discussions and assignments fostered a thorough interaction with the intellectual freedom lectures, texts and applications. The competency A evidence below ties ethics, values and intellectual freedom principles together under the archives and records management umbrella.

The evidence for competency A addresses four areas: Ethics, values, foundational principles of one of the information professions, and the importance of intellectual freedom within that profession. The information profession reported here is records management. The ethical concern is the role of records management in large organizations’ ability to prove they are operating according to their stated values. The assignment was to discuss the improper management of electronic records and information; scandals, legal cases, and allegations.

The process began with a self-led survey of the topic. I remember being surprised by how often good archives and records management could have prevented ethical problems that compromised company values. I learned that records management software includes opportunities for checks and balances. Administrators can track all the changes made by users, from timestamp to content; records management software makes changes transparent. Then, I prepared for the assignment by engaging with classmates on ethical questions such as, “how to trust digital repositories”, and “what constitutes evidence?”. In Unit 5, we discussed the question, “when is protecting e-discovery and admissibility a moral obligation? The competency A evidence answers the latter question: Always. The research for the assignment revealed that trivial-looking mistakes, or lapses in judgement, often resulted in significant changes. Board members were fired. CEOs were discredited. Companies lost funding. Next, observe the assignment summary, which posits; in the case of the American Red Cross, the price of records management mistakes led to reduced emergency funding for American disasters.

INFO 284 Assignment #1 discusses the role poor records management played in media reports of apparent ethical failures of the American Red Cross (AMRC). The alleged failures construe an AMRC that deviated from its core values. I must qualify these statements because the research strongly suggests that AMRC management was often innocent of the allegations. The problem was that sometimes poor record-keeping prevented leadership from proving their innocence. Sometimes, spotty records management created absurd-looking situations that were later shown to be clerical mistakes.

Principles of the records management arm of library and information science are evident in this piece. Primarily, records management must be interpreted as a moral obligation because, in the case of the AMRC, a lack of proof can turn into challenges to an organization’s apparent adherence to its values, and ultimately, reduced funding. In the AMRC’s case, reduced funding means less emergency relief for Americans. I doubt that records clerks see their job as an ethical safeguard or expression of values; but they should.

The INFO 284 assignment expresses my understanding of intellectual freedom because it is representative of my inherent attitude. We cannot know what we do not know, therefore, do not assume to have all the facts, and even after an investigation, qualify those facts with an acknowledgement of the research’s narrow scope. This paper is also an expression of how intellectual freedom is like a microphone on a pendulum: Done right, it allows attention to swing from perspective to perspective. Such competing voices are a sign of our protected rights. The reporters who used records failures to infer criminal activity based on a lack of evidence, are just as important to intellectual freedom as the organization’s right to defend itself.

In LIBR 200, I learned the specific industry-established parameters around censorship. Defamation, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and some classified government information are not protected by the First Amendment. The lines between protected and unprotected expression are always in motion but captured in time; solidified in our legal history. For example, one of my close relatives was sentenced for using fighting words. The words were a practical joke aired over an intercom. Instead of bantering back, the subject of the joke pursued and attained criminal charges. So, a joke is not protected expression, but conversely, the expressive action; police officers shooting mentally ill, deaf or fleeing African Americans is protected at this time. The relationship between protected and unprotected expression, especially if we can consider breathing an expression of intellectual freedom, is a fascinating, everchanging topic.

Generally, I learned to listen to current events for threats to intellectual freedom. For example, I see recent events such as Black Lives Matter protests and the American Library Association’s legal battle to protect open internet, through the lens of intellectual freedom. The value of this perspective is that problems I have viewed as overwhelming in the past now have a name and process I can use to protect IF: The First Amendment. Before my MLIS training, I saw the First Amendment as a nurturing purveyor of hate speech and fake news. Now I see it as a tool for protecting all speech and understand that it is my job to use it to protect free access to information, religion, petition, assembly and expression. Now I see how interwoven these principles are to records and business management, scheduling library conference rooms, providing varied religious materials and representation in public settings and evaluating public library internet filters for appropriateness.

My views of intellectual freedom have evolved so much throughout the MLIS process, that I wonder how much truth matters. While religious beliefs are exempt from logic because they require faith in unmeasurable ideas that cannot be detected with the five senses, world views, politics, parenting, economics and other areas contain so many evidence-supported perspectives, that I am not keen to judge them. For example, a few years ago I was waiting in a circulation desk que, and the person in front of me was placing a request for a book written by a particularly hateful political extremist. The patron said, “I want this book because I like to know the truth”, to which the circulation assistants hesitated and frowned at each other. Silence. In my heart, I also hesitated, but no longer: If a person wants to surround themselves with propaganda, maybe that self-congratulatory, self-affirming literature is exactly what they need to feel like responsible, valuable citizens. What if the extremist turns out to be right? The overarching goal of protecting intellectual freedom is the point; not individual pendulum swings.

References

American Library Association. (2007). Intellectual freedom and censorship. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/censorship/faq

Knox, E. K. (2017). Opposing censorship in difficult times. Library Quarterly, 87(3), 268-276.

United States Publishing Office. (2017). Electronic code of federal regulations. Retrieved from https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/ECFR?page=browse

Evidence

INFO 284 Assignment 1

The American National Red Cross is not as Guilty as it First Appears; How Poor Records Management Hurt the ANRC’s Reputation More Than Mismanagement

The history of the American Red Cross, as presented by Keith C. Epstein’s case study (2015), is repetitive. Leader does charitable work: raises money: gets accused of misconduct and is forcibly removed by the public pressure or the board of directors: Repeat. The American National Red Cross founder, Clara Barton, was accused of mismanagement and misused funds after 20 years of service (Epstein, 2015 and Burton, 1995). The accusations were never confirmed by ANRC records (Burton). The United States National Archive published a collection of ANRC records that reported beneficent effort, unwavering advocacy and appropriate management decisions despite difficult circumstances. For example, Miss Barton was accused of mismanaging supplies, but her records and other primary documents such as correspondence show stolen supply trains and looted wagons (Kratz, 2014). The importance of this brief look back at the ANRC as we look forward to the role of electronic records management is the role records played in public perceptions and therefore; funding and leadership. Ultimately, Miss Barton’s records exonerated her, her mission and the American National Red Cross. Similarly, the ANRC scandals of today are revealed and compartmentalized by records that show a small minority of guilty persons in the face of many innocent volunteers and leaders. That minority, however, can cause significant, organization-wide damage.

Failure to keep and monitor accurate electronic records costs disaster survivors and donors alike. In 2005, an external review of the American National Red Cross (ANRC) found that cars rented for aid workers during the Katrina Disaster were not returned to vendors. Air pumps/ mattresses, supplies and computers disappeared (Epstein, 2015). Nearly $500,000,000 million dollars was donated to the ANRC for Haitian Earthquake relief, but records show that only six permanent dwellings can be confirmed. ANRC records show that donations paid for hand-washing training when there was neither soap nor water. Donations paid for construction training, which was counted as part of 140,000 shelters built by ANRC. Similarly, the ANRC claimed that it helped more people than lived in the areas they referenced (Elliott & Sullivan 2015). As a result, public support for the ANRC wavered. Public outrage over the 9/11 and Katrina failures led to a 100-million-dollar budget deficit in 2009 (Epstein, 2015., Elliot & Sullivan, 2015). Declining donations and mismanagement hurts disaster victims, robs donors and stunts good intentions.

Though in most cases management was held accountable, it was poor record management, not dishonest managers, which undermined management’s ability to spot theft, misappropriations and human resource gaffs. More transparent record management might safeguard the ANRC against public outrage. Lisa Daulby (2015) suggests that companies adhere to the DOD 5015.2 Electronic Records Management Software Applications Design Criteria Standards. Additionally, nonprofit organizations should follow industry standard best practices. Leadership should be more involved in setting strategic direction (Jackson, Fogarty, 2005). For example, Dodie Rotherham’s management of the San Diego, Imperial County Chapter’s response to the Viejas fire was to raise funds instead of serve the population. She was replaced by Jerry Sanders and Ronne Froman, who steered the chapter back to its core mission (Hunsaker, 2007). Leadership must monitor conflicts of interest. Compliance with, and direction from Internal Revenue Service regulations such as Prohibition Against Self-dealing (Section 4941), Taxable Expenditure (Section 4945) and Investments Jeopardizing Charitable Purposes (Section 4944) would safeguard the organization against litigation and negative public perception (IRS, 2015., and Jackson & Fogarty, 2005). Better adherence to these regulations would have prevented some of the abrasive feedback from Haitian community leaders who noted nepotistic preference for self-serving expatriates as the most prominent barrier to the ANRC’s efforts. Specifically, “I think the Red Cross is working for themselves” said Mr. Flaubert, a community liaison (Elliott & Sullivan, 2015).

The literature about the American National Red Cross agrees that its size is unwieldy. With 35,000 employees in the United States, the organization is larger than efficiency allows (Epstein, 2015). With a 3-billion-dollar budget, the ANRC had to invent programs to use extra funds (Epstein). While the ANRC reports that overhead costs use 9% of every dollar, research finds that, in Haiti, 40% of donations went to overhead costs (Elliott & Sullivan): 40% of $500,000,000 is $200,000,000 million dollars. These claims against the ANRC can flourish because they cannot dispute reporters’ accusations with clear, consistent records. If the ANRC could provide documentation to refute claims of inefficiencies, I believe they would. Elliott and Sullivan (2007), for example, requested documentation that would refute their findings, but the ANRC refused. In addition to dealing with large numbers, the ANRCs size attracts unwanted attention. It is sanctioned by Congress as our nation’s first choice for receiving aid money (Burton, 1995). However strong the case for a smaller ANRC, I suspect that better records management could solve many of the perceived and actual problems facing the non-profit.

In INFO 284, we have learned about the risks inherent to cloud storage. Here, I am advocating it as the solution to digital records management of large bureaucratic organizations because all transactions and records can be monitored by management at every level. When information is updated to a central location real time, tagged by information management software, and available for management approval/ rejection, confidence in transparent reliability can increase in the organization, public, regulatory agencies and donors.

We also learned about software that automatically applies archiving, retention, change and revision controls to every in-network document. Further, the data management software uses administrative metadata to govern access, copyright, licensing and creation information (Daulby, 2015). The use of electronic records management systems (ERMS) can prevent record alteration/ deletion by bad actors while ensuring the managers’ ability to monitor documents and transactions consistently.

These technologies, combined with Gapminder; information imaging software, would put control back into managers’ hands. I advocate for data imaging software as a response to the report that the ANRC had 1/3 less gulf state chapters than Midwest chapters, which resulted in poor community organization and prohibitive cultural differences. Similarly, Haiti lacked local chapters which resulted in the same criticisms (Elliott & Sullivan, 2015). Visually tracking these data would have alerted management to organizational shortfalls e.g. gaps.

More complete adoption of three measures: Cloud storage, document management software and data imaging along with better adherence to industry-specific best practices and size controls would safeguard the ANRC against accusations in the eyes of history. For example, the Elliot and Sullivan (2007) article made some negative claims about the ANRC, but the ANRC records show that land ownership disputes amongst Haitians prevented the housing projects they promised: not mismanagement, misappropriations of funds, cultural misunderstandings or self-serving nepotism. As evidenced by the National Archive’s release of ANRC records, good record-keeping guards the truth for history.

References

Burton, Henry David, (1995) In the Service of Humanity. Greenwood Press. Westport CT Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=rJyTkPqIC-sC&pg=PA139&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

Daulby, Lisa. (2015) Unit 3: Electronic Records Management Systems; Functional Requirements; Metadata. Retrieved from https://sjsu.instructure.com/courses/1161849/pages/unit-3?module_item_id=8081771

Elliott, Justin., Sullivan, Laura. (2015) Propublica: How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes. Retrieved from https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes

Epstein, C. Keith. (2015). Case Study: American Red Cross; Contribute Sept. 25, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.contributemedia.com/trends_details.php?id=107

Hunsaker, Johanna. (2007) American Red Cross: Under Fire. Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies. Vol. 13, No. 4. Retrieved from https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1301620851/american-red-cross-under-fire

Internal Revenue Service. (2015) Q. IRC 4941 - THE NATURE OF SELF-DEALING. Retrieved from http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopicq85.pdf

Jackson, M. Peggy., Fogarty E. Toni. (2005) Sarbanes-Oxley for Nonprofits. Wiley & Sons., Inc., Hoboken, NJ. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=JsU5lm8bKSIC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP1

Kratz, Jessie. (2014) Prologue: Remembering the Geneva Convention through the Eyes of Clara Barton. National Archive. Retrieved from http://blogs.archives.gov/prologue/?p=13438

National Archives. (2011) Processing Records of the American Red Cross. Retrieved from http://blogs.archives.gov/TextMessage/2011/02/24/processing-records-of-the-american-red-cross/

Tsay, B., & Turpen, R. A. (2011). The Control Environment in Not-for-Profit Organizations. CPA Journal, 81(1), 64-67.

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