| dc.description.abstract | This conference focused on the wider context in which information professionals
operate. Information professionals are responsible for managing, storing,
retrieving, presenting and disseminating information. This conference examined
legal, ethical and other issues that the information professional needs to be aware of
and take account of in offering an information service. The papers, together, raise
issues of relevance to all branches of the library and information profession:
information brokers, public librarians engaged in offering free information,
information consultants and academic library and information workers. The issues
are considered against the backdrop of an international information industry, with
sorne focus on the particular problems associated with information provision and
flow in Europe.
These proceedings represent a unique review of a number of legal and ethical
issues, and they have a significant contribution to make to the heightening of
awareness of such issues, and to continuing and stimulating debate. Both practising
information professionals and students should regard these proceedings not merely
as a state-of-the-art distillation, but also as an important basis for practice and
policy.
Legal and ethical issues are a thread running through most papers in the
conference, although each paper seeks to view these issues from a different
perspective. An appropriate starting point is intellectual property rights. This was
the topic of Session 1 which includes papers on these traditional areas of intellectual
property rights; patents, trademarks and design copyright and copyright. There
ha ve been changes in legislation and practice and concems in each of these fields in
recent years, and jointly the papers serve as a useful overview of these important
controls on the use and application of information. | |
