Naming names: The ethics of identification in digital library metadata

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Abstract

In many digital libraries, visual objects are published and metadata attached to allow for search and retrieval. For visual objects in which people appear, names are often added to the metadata so that digital library users can search for people appearing in these objects. Although this seems straight-forward, there are ethical implications of adding names to metadata for visual objects. This paper explores the impact of this action and discusses relevant ethical issues it raises. It asserts that an individual's right to privacy and control over personal information must be weighed against the benefit of the object to society and the professional ethic to authentically represent a resource through its metadata. Context and an understanding of the major ethical issues will inform the practical decision of whether to keep objects online and add metadata to them, but items should generally be published unless there are clear ethical violations or a community relationship is in jeopardy.

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APA

Seeman, D. (2012). Naming names: The ethics of identification in digital library metadata. In Knowledge Organization (Vol. 39, pp. 325–331). International Society for Knowledge Organization. https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2012-5-325

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