Are virtual reference services color blind?

This study reports an experiment that examines whether librarians provide equitable virtual reference services to diverse user groups. The relative absence of social cues in the virtual environment may mean greater equality of services though at the same time greater inequalities may arise as librarians can become less self-aware online. Findings indicate that the quality of service librarians provide to African Americans and Arabs is lower than the quality of service they provide to Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, and Jewish students. This study adds to the knowledge of subjective bias in the virtual environment by specifying those that are discriminated against online, identifying the kinds of discriminatory actions of virtual reference librarians, and identifying the type of queries that more frequently result in unbiased service.     

Publishing,property, and the national information infrastructure

Upon reviewing thePreliminary Draft of the Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, given the titleIntellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure, one immediately confronts the grand ambiguity that resides in the two words: “intellectual property.” That the task force on the information infrastructure, enshrined with the acronym NII, had to locate precedent for its missioning Supreme Court Justice Story's 1841 observations on copyright issues as an area involving the “metaphysics of the law” indicates what a long reach the very notion of intellectual property entails in a democratic society. He is the author ofCommunicating Ideas: The Politics of Publishing and has published widely in the journal literature, includingScholarly Publishing; Logos; Publishing Research Quarterly; Journal of the American Society of Information Science, among others.     

On legitimacy,force, and jeane J. Kirkpatrick

These comments were delivered on January 21, 1988 at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in honor of the publication by Transaction Publishers at Rutgers University of the two-volume work by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick entitledLegitimacy and Force.