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When you admit that you do research on information and communication in the humanities disciplines, a common response is ‘Why on earth do you do that? Surely there is nothing worth knowing that isn't already obvious.’ What the sceptical listener is telling you is that he believes humanist research and scholarship are still firmly wedded to methods, sources and subject matter that have not changed in the centuries since the Middle Ages ended and the Age of Humanism began. The people who tell you this are not fools; they are just as likely to be distinguished librarians or researchers as they are to be outsiders forgivably ignorant of what actually happens in the humanities. The idea that you really need to do very little to help humanist scholarship achieve its ends, and that you certainly don't need to do anything much which is new, follows only too logically from this initial scepticism. Fortunately, it has not been necessary for researchers in Britain to overcome such scepticism to obtain support for investigations in the humanities because the British Library Research and Development Department (BLRDD), the nation's chief information research funding body, has been a committed promoter of such research. Indeed, it has often been ahead of the information research community in its concern for humanities issues.

User privacy has taken on a fresh importance as digital resources and systems become increasingly important in libraries. Public and professional concern has been aroused by numerous instances of the privacy‐threatening effects of current technical and legal developments. Not only do loan and other transactions leave traces in library management systems, but Internet use at public terminals in libraries is also vulnerable to intrusion. Whilst the UK data protection legislation offers protection to personal data, new legislation such as the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act suggest a different tendency. The Legal and Policy Research Group at Loughborough University’s Department of Information Science is working on a substantial investigation, funded by Re:source, of the issue of user privacy in the digital library environment. Guidelines on privacy matters for information professionals are being developed on the basis of the investigation.

With digital technology libraries can archive considerable resources of detailed information about their users. This data is generally regarded as confidential between the library and the individual, but it has potential interest for commercial organisations, law enforcement and security agencies, and libraries themselves, to assist in marketing their services. The Privacy in the Digital Library Environment project at Loughborough University, 2000‐2002, investigated the issues this raises. Findings suggested that users had low levels of anxiety about privacy when using libraries, but this was because they expected that libraries would not pass on personal data to other bodies. Librarians, whilst respecting privacy as a professional value in principle, did not give it a high rating against other values. Additionally, a significant minority of libraries was not well prepared for data protection. To assist the professional community, guidelines for privacy policy were drawn up on the basis of suggestions made by survey respondents.

In one of the written versions of netiquette, the first rule is “remember the human”. This is intended to encourage more tolerant and considerate behaviour amongst Internet users. It could also be taken as a reminder to librarians that they should not let the attractions of new technology cause them to forget the human dimension. A major aspect of the relationship between the librarian and the user is the confidentiality of transactions and the librarian’s commitment to preserving the user’s privacy. Results from Loughborough University’s Privacy in the Digital Library project suggest that users have very strong trust that their privacy is safe with librarians. However, the results also suggest that librarians are not well organised to protect user privacy against possible intrusions from commerce, government or other sources. Other evidence suggests computer system managers do not fully share the librarian’s concern for human values, and tend to place technical considerations first, so there is a need for libraries to develop policy that emphasises human values in the technological context. The principles behind sets of guidelines on policy development drafted for the Council of Europe, the Loughborough project, and Library Association Publishing, are outlined.

The necessity for social intelligence, broadly defined, to inform decision making in developing countries is apparent as globalization places increasing demands on governments, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), parastatals, and business corporations. Yet the existing information systems of developing countries suffer from a range of problems which afflict all three main elements: documentary services (libraries and information centres), statistical services, and management information systems (including records management and computerized systems). Grey literature is vital to each of these three systems, either as the partially‐processed product of the internal information‐generating capacity of the country itself, or in the external scanning process. Information professionals have tended to concentrate on the technical problems of acquiring, listing, indexing, retrieving and alerting potential users to documents. This largely ignores questions about the capacity and propensity of the targeted users to absorb information, however well it might be organized by information systems. An examination of the decision‐making process in a selected country (Malawi) and a case study of planning for technology transfer (from Kenya) are used to illustrate these problems and the role of intelligence. A range of structural and non‐structural constraints on the absorption of information is identified. The conclusion is that the problems of existing information systems can only be relieved by information professionals further processing and refining the information content of grey literature so as to present it to the decision makers in the form of intelligence reports.

The absence of a formal code of ethics for librarians in Britain until 1983 meant that ethical values were passed on by example rather than precept. Increased interest in ethical issues in the 1970s, when the profession was seen as in crisis, resulted in discussions within the Library Association and a draft code was issued in 1981. Despite strong criticism of the draft, it became the basis of the formal Library Association code. It has seldom been tested as a disciplinary instrument. Renewed interest in ethical issues and the need for a Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) code, after the creation of the new organisation in 2002, have returned codes into the area of debate. It is suggested that a new code, rather than standing alone, might form part of a group of related codes from other organisations, all of which could be endorsed by CILIP. This would be intended to encourage ethical maturity in the profession, rather than simply acting as a basis for professional discipline.

The study of the diffusion of innovations into libraries has become a cottage industry of sorts, as libraries have always provided a fascinating test-bed of nonprofit institutions attempting improvement through the use of new policies, practices, and assorted apparatus (Malinconico, 1997). For example, Paul Sturges (1996) has focused on the evolution of public library services over the course of 70 years across England, while Verna Pungitore (1995) presented the development of standardization of library planning policies in contemporary America. For the past several decades, however, the study of diffusion in libraries has tended to focus on the implementation of information technologies (e.g., Clayton, 1997; Tran, 2005; White, 2001) and their associated competencies (e.g., Marshall, 1990; Wildemuth, 1992), the improvements in performance associated with their use (e.g., Damanpour, 1985, 1988; Damanpour & Evan, 1984), and ways to manage resistance to technological changes within the library environment (e.g., Weiner, 2003).

The organisers of the annual Electronic Public Information Provision seminar at Loughborough University regularly ask participants about the topics they would wish to be included in the programme. Among the topics they most frequently ask for are copyright and other legal issues. This article is a version of a presentation given at the 1995 seminar, held on 19 September. It is intended to provide a kind of checklist of the relevant issues, with some indication of how providers, and those such as librarians who feed information into their services, can avoid embarrassing and possibly costly mistakes. One thing it is certainly not about, is how to win spectacular lawsuits; it is intended to suggest how difficult situations can be avoided by anticipating them. The viewpoint is that of an [informed] layperson, not a lawyer. When decisions on really contentious matters need to be made it is important to consider taking professional advice.

How do students comment on ethical principles, which principles are important for their awareness of librarianship, how do they understand the relevance of human rights for their future work?

The case study presents the results of a lecture on information rights and ethics with 50 Master students in library and information sciences (LIS) at the University of Lille (France) in 2014–2015. Students were asked to comment on the core principles of the International Federation of Library Association (IFLA) Code of Ethics.

The students see the library as a privileged space of access to information, where the librarian takes on the function of a guardian of this specific individual freedom—a highly political role and task. This opinion is part of a general commitment to open access and free flowing resources on Internet. They emphasize the social responsibility toward the society as a whole but most of all toward the individual patron as a real person, member of a cultural community, a social class or an ethnic group. With regard to Human Rights, the students interpret the IFLA Code mainly as a code of civil, political, and critical responsibility to endorse the universal right of freedom of expression. They see a major conflict between ethics and policy. The findings are followed by some recommendations for further development of LIS education, including internship, transversality, focus on conflicts and the students’ cognitive dissonance and teaching of social skills, in terms of work-based solidarity and collective choices.

The chapter is qualitative research based on empirical data from a French LIS Master program.