Both Fernandez (2016) and van Otterlo (2016b) describe how AI can be employed to do, for example, recommendations based on access to items and user data. AI can also be employed for personal assistants (agents) implementing virtual reference desks (Liu, 2011), and to optimize library and archival processes. Many core archival processes can be automated but currently digitalization and algorithmization have only just begun. Access to lots of information has been the dream of many visionaries, especially in the last century. Joseph Licklider (1965) predicted more than fifty years ago that humans by the year 2000 would invest in a kind of intermedium40 which would provide access to the so-called procognitive net, containing all knowledge. Paul Otlet envisioned various automated ways to do knowledge classification and retrieval, and laid the foundation for the modern internet with his Mundaneum and universal decimal classification. In 1945 Vannevar Bush introduced the "Memex", resembling Otlet's "Mondotheque" (introduced around the same time), a machine in the form of a regular desk that used microfilm as the storage medium for collections of text, and which could provide access to knowledge. Otlet's version was more related to H.G Wells "World Brain" in the sense that it focused on "networked" knowledge, and targeted film, photographs and radio in addition to text. Wells, building on ideas on information retrieval in his early "A Modern Utopia" from 1905, introduced his "World Brain" in 1939 in a series of lectures, as an idea to make the whole human memory accessible to every individual. More recently Wilfred Lancaster wrote (1982, quoting Schiller 1977): "Ultimately, the signs point to a technology offering search capability at home or office terminals without the aid of librarian intermediaries who perform the searches." (p. 33-34). All these, and many more pioneers (see Borner (2010) and Wright (2014) for extensive overviews), envisioned forms of technology that would connect each individual to "all" knowledge, in the form of some "world encyclopaedia" and would make this knowledge retrievable by technology. In essence, our current world, with Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and smartphones, exhibits all that they were looking for. The enthusiasm of these pioneers in "universally accessible" knowledge is echoed in today's Silicon Valley's technology push. Every day comes with new services, new technologies, new apps and new AI. That each person on earth, in principle, has access to the world's knowledge through a smartphone was just a start. Soon, algorithms will become the prime actor doing selection, ordering and description for many information-rich tasks. What Silicon Valley and the pioneers also have in common, at least until very recently, is their focus on the possibilities of novel technologies, and not on possible (unintended) consequences. Archivists, librarians and other information professionals have powerful roles as gatekeepers, and with great power comes great responsibility. If we are increasingly handing such tasks as access to information over to algorithms, or algivists, we need to look at the ethics of doing so. And, since human information professionals have been doing that for such a long time, it is interesting to see how they have handled moral issues in the next section. (3) The Intended Archivist: Ethical Aspects of Archives Taking practical action based on moral values is the domain of ethics (Laudon, 1995; Baase, 2013; Kizza, 2013). According to Kizza (2013) morality is "a set of rules for right conduct, a system used to modify and regulate our behavior." (p. 3). It naturally has close ties to law since when a society deems certain moral values to be important, it can formalize such values in a law and set behavior that will uphold those values as a norm. Ethics typically is concerned with analysis of such norm setting processes. Classic ethical questions are: "should we clone humans?", "is it sometimes allowed to kill people?" and "should we provide a base income in case robots take over most jobs?". As Laudon defines it (1995): "Ethics is about the decision making and actions of free human beings. When faced with alternative courses of action or alternative goals to pursue, ethics helps us to make the correct decision... Ethics is, above all, about what is good and what is evil, and how we come to make such judgments" (p. 34). I would summarize it as: if there are options what to do, then ethics is concerned with practical reasoning about "good" and "bad" actions. Important subsequent questions are then, for whom is something good or bad, and by who's standardsDifferent answers to those questions induce a variety of ethical reasoning frameworks, with two main dimensions. One is about rules vs. consequences: to find the right decision one may follow a religious rule like "thou shalt not steal", or look at the consequences and decide, for example ignoring a red light at night when there is no traffic. The second dimension deals with "for whom" something is good: the individual, or the collective. A well-known collective consequentialist framework is John Stuart Mills' utilitarian ethics, which is aimed at finding the decision that gives the best result on average, for all, and can be unfair to single individuals. Traditional archives are filled with ethical issues. The archivist performs many core41 archival operations that all involve ethical decisions. Archives are (just like libraries and museums, see Kirchhoff et al., 2008) "memory institutions".42 Morris (2009): "Archives are records, regardless of format, created or received by a person or organization during the conduct of affairs and preserved because they contain information of continuing value." (p. 4). Archivists deal with the selection (acquisition, appraisal, accessioning, retention), maintenance (provenance, order, physical arrangements) and description (cataloguing, referencing) of sources. Access to the material in traditional archives involves physical access to the physical material. Because archivists are, in contrast43 to e.g. librarians, highly involved in creating the order and descriptions of the archive, users are more dependent on the archivist when they want to access materials. Zastrow (2013): "The idiosyncratic and contextualized world of archives necessitates communication with the archivist." (p. 18). Physical access to archives and libraries has always appealed to our imagination, in fiction, poetry and film (Crawford, 2015). Exciting stories like Indiana Jones revolve around the idea of finding a lost archive and retrieving a valuable item. The nicest example of such a physical hunt for a book appears in Umberto Eco's (1980) The Name of the Rose, which features an evil librarian, a difficult book maze, and poisonous pages as physical barriers to access. archives in liquid times 274 martijn van otterlo from intended archivists to intentional algivists. ethical codes for humans and machines in the archives 40 In his words: "a capital investment in their intellectual Cadillac". 41 https://www2.archivists.org/node/14804 42 Kirchhoff et al. (2008, p252) cites Lorcan Dempsey (2000) as follows: "Archives, libraries and museums are memory institutions: they organize the European cultural and intellectual record. Their collections contain the memory of peoples, communities, institutions and individuals, the scientific and cultural heritage, and the products throughout time of our imagination, craft and learning. They join us to our ancestors and are our legacy to future generations. They are used by the child, the scholar, and the citizen, by the business person, the tourist and the learner. These in turn are creating the heritage of our future. Memory institutions contribute directly and indirectly to prosperity through support for learning, commerce, tourism, and personal fulfillment." 43 https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-explain-the-difference-between-a-librarian-and-an-archivist 275

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2017 | | pagina 139