Perché le biblioteche servono ancora, nonostante internet

The most "social" and useful thing that libraries can do is - today as in the past - to help citizens to find, evaluate and exploit the information sources necessary to carry out their social roles and tasks in the best way, also ensuring that citizens of the future will continue to access the bibliographic documents produced both in the past and in the present

Sulla natura e il futuro della biblioteca pubblica : lettera aperta a Claudio Leombroni

The use of e-mail in public libraries is indicative of their nature, mission, priorities and future

Perché le biblioteche servono ancora, nonostante internet

The most "social" and useful thing that libraries can do is - today as in the past - to help citizens to find, evaluate and exploit the information sources necessary to carry out their social roles and tasks in the best way, also ensuring that citizens of the future will continue to access the bibliographic documents produced both in the past and in the present

ESB Forum, DOAJ e open access

Che cosa si intende per accesso aperto? È possibile definirlo in modo meno restrittivo di quanto fa il Doaj? Il carteggio qui presentato verte su una questione solo apparentemente burocratica, vale a dire l'includibilità nella Directory of Open Access Journals di una rivista che intende l'accessibilità dei testi in modo "eterodosso"

Neutralità della rete, tariffe gratuite e giardini recintati: le difficili scelte della libertà intellettuale

Net neutrality is the principle according to which all data transmitted through the internet should be managed in the same way by internet service providers (ISPs), without favouring or disadvantaging any type of content, service or user. A particularly discussed way of favouring contents and services offered by specific companies is the so-called zero rating, which consists in the possibility of accessing the internet for free, but only for certain sites or services managed by these companies. IFLA, with two documents published in 2016 and 2018, has definitely taken a stand in favour of net neutrality and against zero rating, in the name of the intellectual freedom of internet users, who should not be driven by economic convenience to prefer certain contents compared to others. The author of this article does not fully agree with the position of IFLA (which, though driven by noble intentions, risks aggravating the digital divide and undermining the principles underlying open access and library services) and proposes to invest rather more energy in promoting free universal access to the entire internet (or, at least, to the public administration's online sites and services) financed by public bodies, which could be a support to intellectual freedom far more effective than any fight against zero rating

Web apocalyptic and integrated: is the Internet making us stupid or smart?

Both the American books reviewed in this paper - Nicholas Carr's The shallows. What the Internet is doing to our brains, and David Weinberger's Too big to know. Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren't the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room – deal with the issue of how the internet is changing the way we learn and communicate. Still, they come at diametrically opposite conclusions. Carr claims that the excessive use of the Internet may limit our concentration and understanding abilities, making it more and more difficult for many of us reading and writing those long and complex texts that are the basis of human culture. Weinberger thinks that the Internet – thanks to the multiplication and celerity of its communication channels – is unfolding new and exciting perspectives for human knowledge, no longer adequately supported by traditional documents and “experts”. In the author's opinion both these theories are erroneous, being too radical and sharing a number of fallacies, e.g. a technological determinism and the tendency to consider certain characteristics as peculiar of a very few media, while they actually belong to a lot of different media.Entrambi i libri qui commentati – Internet ci rende stupidi? Come la rete sta cambiando il nostro cervello di Nicholas Carr, e La stanza intelligente. La conoscenza come proprietà della rete di David Weinberger – scritti da due autori americani, affrontano il tema di come internet stia modificando il nostro modo di conoscere e di comunicare, giungendo però a conclusioni specularmente opposte. Per Carr l'eccessivo uso di internet riduce le capacità di concentrazione e di comprensione, rendendo sempre più difficile la lettura e la scrittura dei testi lunghi e complessi che costituiscono le basi della cultura umana, mentre per Weinberger internet – soprattutto attraverso la moltiplicazione e l'immediatezza dei canali comunicativi – apre nuove ed esaltanti prospettive alla conoscenza umana, che non è più sufficientemente supportata dai documenti cartacei e dagli “esperti” tradizionali. Per l'autore entrambe queste tesi sono sostanzialmente errate, sia perché eccessivamente radicali sia perché – paradossalmente – condividono alcune fallacie, fra cui il determinismo tecnologico e l'attribuzione esclusiva ad alcuni mezzi di comunicazione di caratteristiche possedute invece da molti altri tipi di media

Alethic rights and alethic pluralism in libraries

The concept of truth, although unavoidable, is very problematic from a philosophical point of view and, in the field of librarianship, it is even more disputed for various reasons: inapplicability to libraries' collections and reference services, scarcity of resources necessary in the event of a possible application, conflict with the value of intellectual neutrality. The “alethic rights” proposed by D'Agostini in 2017, pertinent to truth claims in social contexts, can be interpreted in two ways: the “strong” way is not applicable to libraries because it would lead to the same problems caused by the research of the truthfulness of each document preserved by libraries and of any information provided by their reference services; the "weak" way would instead be applicable to libraries, but it is more appropriate not to apply this either, both because there would be the risk that it could be interpreted in the strong way, and because its application would still be redundant compared to what already happens in libraries and to what, if necessary, could be obtained in emergency situations by applying instead the principle of social responsibility. In the library field it would be more sensible and useful to apply, instead of alethic rights, the epistemological theory of “alethic pluralism” by Wright (1992) and Lynch (2009), which defines the concept of truth in a way compatible with technical practices and with deontological rules currently more widespread in libraries

Deontologia professionale

The volume illustrates the main values of the professional ethics of librarians (intellectual freedom, right to confidentiality, social responsibility, intellectual property, professionalism, democracy) and their possible conflicts, citing and commenting on numerous codes of ethics drawn up by professional associations around the world, including those recently issued by IFLA in 2012 and by AIB in 2014

Neutralità della rete, tariffe gratuite e giardini recintati: le difficili scelte della libertà intellettuale

Net neutrality is the principle according to which all data transmitted through the internet should be managed in the same way by internet service providers (ISPs), without favouring or disadvantaging any type of content, service or user. A particularly discussed way of favouring contents and services offered by specific companies is the so-called zero rating, which consists in the possibility of accessing the internet for free, but only for certain sites or services managed by these companies. IFLA, with two documents published in 2016 and 2018, has definitely taken a stand in favour of net neutrality and against zero rating, in the name of the intellectual freedom of internet users, who should not be driven by economic convenience to prefer certain contents compared to others. The author of this article does not fully agree with the position of IFLA (which, though driven by noble intentions, risks aggravating the digital divide and undermining the principles underlying open access and library services) and proposes to invest rather more energy in promoting free universal access to the entire internet (or, at least, to the public administration's online sites and services) financed by public bodies, which could be a support to intellectual freedom far more effective than any fight against zero rating

Perché le biblioteche servono ancora, nonostante internet

The most "social" and useful thing that libraries can do is - today as in the past - to help citizens to find, evaluate and exploit the information sources necessary to carry out their social roles and tasks in the best way, also ensuring that citizens of the future will continue to access the bibliographic documents produced both in the past and in the present