Foreword by Alan S. Inouye; Afterword by Nancy Kranich The first of its kind, this important new text provides a much-needed introduction to the myriad information policy issues that impact information professionals, information institutions, and the patrons and communities served by those institutions. In this key textbook for LIS students and reference text for practitioners, noted scholars Jaeger and Taylor draw from current, authoritative sources to familiarize readers with the history of information policy; discuss the broader societal issues shaped by policy, including access to infrastructure, digital literacy and inclusion, accessibility, and security; elucidate the specific laws, regulations, and policies that impact information, including net neutrality, filtering, privacy, openness, and much more; use case studies from a range of institutions to examine the issues, bolstered by discussion questions that encourage readers to delve more deeply; explore the intersections of information policy with human rights, civil rights, and professional ethics; and prepare readers to turn their growing understanding of information policy into action, through activism, advocacy, and education. This book will help future and current information professionals better understand the impacts of information policy on their activities, improving their ability to serve as effective advocates on behalf of their institutions, patrons, and communities.

This book will help future and current information professionals better understand the impacts of information policy on their activities, improving their ability to serve as effective advocates of their institutions, patrons, and communities.

In this pathbreaking study of foundation influence, author Joan Roelofs produces a comprehensive picture of philanthropy's critical role in society. She shows how a vast number of policy innovations have arisen from the most important foundations, lessening the destructive impact of global "marketization." Conversely, groups and movements that might challenge the status quo are nudged into line with grants and technical assistance, and foundations also have considerable power to shape such things as public opinion, higher education, and elite ideology. The cumulative effect is that foundations, despite their progressive goals, have a depoliticizing effect, one that preserves the hegemony of neoliberal institutions.

It’s not hyperbole to conclude that in today’s world, information literacy is essential for survival and success; and also that, if left unchecked, the social consequences of widespread misinformation and information illiteracy will only continue to grow more dire. Thus its study must be at the core of every education. But while many books have been written on information literacy, this text is the first to examine information literacy from a cross-national, cross-cultural, and cross-institutional perspective. From this book, readers will learn about information literacy in a wide variety of contexts, including academic and school libraries, public libraries, special libraries, and archives, through research and literature that has previously been siloed in specialized publications; come to understand why information literacy is not just an issue of information and technology, but also a broader community and societal issue; get an historical overview of advertising, propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, and illiteracy; gain knowledge of both applied strategies for working with individuals and for addressing the issues in community contexts; find methods for combating urgent societal ills caused and exacerbated by misinformation; and get tools and techniques for advocacy, activism, and self-reflection throughout one’s career.

As discussions about the roles played by information in economic, political, and social arenas continue to evolve, the need for an intellectual primer on information ethics that also functions as a solid working casebook for LIS students and professionals has never been more urgent.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

How control over information creation, processing, flows, and use has become the most effective form of power: theoretical foundations and empirical examples of information policy in the U.S., an innovator informational state. As the informational state replaces the bureaucratic welfare state, control over information creation, processing, flows, and use has become the most effective form of power. In Change of State Sandra Braman examines the theoretical and practical ramifications of this "change of state." She looks at the ways in which governments are deliberate, explicit, and consistent in their use of information policy to exercise power, exploring not only such familiar topics as intellectual property rights and privacy but also areas in which policy is highly effective but little understood. Such lesser-known issues include hybrid citizenship, the use of "functionally equivalent borders" internally to allow exceptions to U.S. law, research funding, census methods, and network interconnection. Trends in information policy, argues Braman, both manifest and trigger change in the nature of governance itself.After laying the theoretical, conceptual, and historical foundations for understanding the informational state, Braman examines 20 information policy principles found in the U.S Constitution. She then explores the effects of U.S. information policy on the identity, structure, borders, and change processes of the state itself and on the individuals, communities, and organizations that make up the state. Looking across the breadth of the legal system, she presents current law as well as trends in and consequences of several information policy issues in each category affected. Change of State introduces information policy on two levels, coupling discussions of specific contemporary problems with more abstract analysis drawing on social theory and empirical research as well as law. Most important, the book provides a way of understanding how information policy brings about the fundamental social changes that come with the transformation to the informational state.