Social Media and the Ethics of Scholarship: A Call for the Assessment and Communication of Rights Information, Provenance, and Context

This chapter of Copyright Conversations: Rights Literacy in the Digital World, edited by Sara Benson, Copyright Librarian, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois, examines the role that libraries can play to promote information literacy for both the scholarly community and, where materials are made available in the public online environment, to the public at large. This chapter documents two exercises undertaken by Columbia University Libraries in an ever-growing environment of skepticism about the integrity and authenticity of information found on the internet and, in particular, on social media sites. Within this context, Columbia University Libraries undertook both a purposeful examination of the creation and development of a rights metadata system associated with distinct collections at Columbia University Libraries and a review of scholarly and strategic priorities. In this chapter, copyright literacy is defined as having and using the knowledge, understanding, and practice skills that enable the ethical creation and use of copyright-protected materials. As part of Columbia University Libraries’ review, copyright and, in particular, copyright literacy was identified, assessed and prioritized as a facet of the ethics of scholarship