Ethical and Policy Considerations for Digitizing Traditional Knowledge

Traditional knowledge is usually considered to be information which is passed from generation to generation within a community and without documentation in formal educational, informational or government systems (Battiste, 2005;  WIPO, 2014). This information is often shared orally, and consists of knowledge about traditional practices, technologies, trades, medicines, rituals, stories and more (Bruchac, 2014). As memory institutions, libraries, museums and archives serve as repositories for traditional knowledge by preserving and maintaining oral traditions while upholding ethical and policy considerations like intellectual property, consent, and access (Ansari, 2016; Liew et al., 2021). Students, researchers, professors and the public are interested in this information, however, this information, when made public, may also be used for profit in industry and business.

Becvar & Srinivasan (2009) explained that librarians documenting traditional knowledge must balance the core library values of intellectual freedom and universal access with cultural considerations and differences in information sharing. While critical perspectives of open access have explored the preservation, maintenance and sharing of traditional knowledge, additional instructional materials related to the ethical and policy considerations of digitizing traditional knowledge are needed to support the scholarly communication curriculum. Development of this open educational resource (OER) is intended to provide introductory instructional materials and resources to supplement instruction in these areas with an authentic case study, lesson plan and instructional materials. This OER describes the ethical and policy considerations needed for digitizing traditional knowledge in libraries, including the need to consider intellectual property, ownership and obtaining consent for digitizing knowledge, as well as the use of language and technologies that provide access to the community who has provided the knowledge.

The creators of this OER sought instructional materials which could provide an overview of the complex ethical and policy issues related to digitizing collections of traditional knowledge. Using the case study of one academic library in Ghana and their experiences digitizing local knowledge about pandemics (a project funded by the British Library), this OER provides a mix of theoretical, practical and experiential information related to the discussions around expanding access to traditional knowledge while considering cultural values and the stewardship of these collections. In particular, this OER provides a variety of instructional materials which explore who should digitize these resources, obtaining consent from content creators, sharing these resources and issues/challenges with traditional creative commons licenses for licensing sensitive, cultural content.

The creators of this OER have backgrounds in scholarly communication, digitization and information policy and ethics. Jenna Kammer, PhD, assistant professor of library science at the University of Central Missouri, and Kodjo Atiso, PhD, University Librarian at Cape Coast Technical University, have published original research in many journals such as the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, IFLA Journal and Libri. In addition, they have both been involved in digitization projects such as development of a digital repository in Ghana (Atiso) and development of a digital library for a western art museum in Arizona (Kammer). Both are educators with teaching and instructional design experience at the university level.

The full resource is available to be edited and adapted in Google Drive.

For questions, please contact Jenna Kammer, jkammer@ucmo.edu.

This is an Open Educational Resource created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook.

License: CC BY-NC 4.0

Preferred citation: Kammer, J. & Atiso, K. (2022). Ethical and policy considerations for digitizing traditional knowledge. Scholarly Communication Notebook. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Quv9KxuQ6FdjTVPG7gAKiQUncMnNtjlI?usp=sharing