All librarians and libraries have information policies, and so do most people. The big issues, like censorship, intellectual property, freedom of information, privacy and data protection, crowd our minds, but the process of decision making is the same at every level and in every context, whether we are concerned with government secrets, advertising standards or our children’s reading and viewing habits.  

This book examines the issues from varying standpoints, including the human rights approach, the commercial approach, and the states-interest approach. These are all placed within the context of arguments about the public sphere. The working librarian has to be in a position to justify every stock purchase and information access decision, and in the strategies they follow to legitimate the library. The discussion of issues in this book will give librarians the context and arguments they need to identify and apply appropriate information policies and strategies.

The key areas covered are:

• contexts for information policy
• globalization and information societies
• information rights and information policy
• information policy sectors.

This book is essential reading for library students, researchers and policy makers as well as for all LIS practitioners wishing to widen their awareness of the important issues surrounding information policy.

March 2010; 224pp; paperback; 978-1-85604-677-0; £44.95

Look inside this book

• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1: Introduction