Privacy and Data Management

Did you know the No Child Left Behind Act has a super secret, hidden provision that requires all public high schools to provide the names, ages, phone numbers, and addresses of all male students to the Department of Defense? This type of data mining has ushered in the age of... BIG DATA.

Big Data... that sounds kind of scary, right? Well it is. Big Data is defined (by danah boyd and Kate Crawford, 2012) as a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon that rests on the interplay of:

1. Technology: maximizing computation power and algorithmic accuracy to gather, analyze, link, and compare large data sets. 
2. Analysis: drawing on large data sets to identify patterns in order to make economic, social, technical, and legal claims. 
3. Mythology: the widespread belief that large data sets offer a higher form of intelligence and knowledge that can generate insights that were previously impossible, with the aura of truth, objectivity, and accuracy.

Basically, Big Data is ushering in a radical change in how we think about research. Knowledge isn't concerned with quality of information, but is focused on quantity of information. With this large amount of data, it is very important that researchers realize their own biases for information. There is no such thing as pure impartiality, and when taken out of context, Big Data can lose its meaning. 

Since librarians are in charge of curating and working with Big Data, the ALA has published a guide to Keeping up with Big Data. Since the massive volume and low cost of data storage, it is easily acquired by libraries, and will be needed especially within academic libraries, as the patron's future job may be working solely with Big Data.

Relevant readings:

• boyd, danah, & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical Questions for Big Data. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662–679.
• Ferguson, S., Thornley, C., & Gibb, F. (2014). How do libraries manage the ethical and privacy issues of RFID implementation? A qualitative investigation into the decision-making processes of ten libraries. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 0961000613518572.
• Solove, Daniel. "Why Privacy Matters When You Have 'Nothin' to Hide'"  [a thought piece by Daniel J. Solove from The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, 2011]