Standing Committee on Freedom of Information: IFLA Advisory Committees
FREEDOM OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION & FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Chair Louise Lahatte reports back from WLIC2019 in Athens on IFLA’S Advisory Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE).
As well as delivering conference sessions on key topics, the advisory committee holds business meetings during the Congress, and welcomes anyone interested to attend these meetings and to participate in discussion and setting priorities.
We discussed the issue of Linked-in restricting access to Lynda.com to Linked-in members, which is a shared issue across North America and Australasia, with library associations and libraries raising their concerns with them. Demonstrating that collective discussion and action can change things, Linked-in are now reviewing this decision. This year the committee have written and IFLA have published some important new standards and statements.
Guidelines on Public Library Internet Access (download here) offer both support for the value of such access, but also practical guidance and checklists for dealing with the issues that this may raise.
IFLA Statement on Censorship (download here) updates an earlier IFLA statement, and refers to the balance needed between maintaining freedom of access to information, and limitations that may be necessary to protect people, such as those on child pornography or incitements to terrorist activity.
FAIFE in a box – still in development – this is a toolkit for library associations wanting to strengthen their activity in this area. Interestingly the toolkit was inspired by LIANZA setting up our new committee last year!
Other emerging focus areas for the committee are hate speech, internet governance, and privacy issues including around artificial intelligence.
The main programme session ‘20 years of the IFLA intellectual freedom statement : constancy and change’ – was live-streamed and now available here on Youtube.
Louise will be at LIANZA Conference, and is happy to talk to anyone about Freedom of Information and or the IFLA congress experience.