When: Thursday 20 October, 3pm
Location: Building: H, Room: B.36 Lecture Theatre, Caulfield campus
Digital and networking technologies, and associated profound organisational and social change, are challenging traditional models, frameworks and practices in which librarians, archivists, records managers and other information professionals manage and control access to information. Privacy, intellectual property, intellectual freedom, and open access are all areas of professional concern, whether that be in advising information creators of their obligations, or in establishing and maintaining organisational, institutional, and societal frameworks for information management.
In this joint COSI Research and FIT5104/3124 Professional Practice seminar, Helen Versey, the Victorian Privacy Commissioner, and Gavan McCarthy from the eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC) at the University of Melbourne, will use the theme of privacy in research processes to explore these issues from researcher and information managers perspectives. It will discuss how the capacities of the new information technologies to allow for infinite capture and distribution of digital and networking technologies need to be balanced against maintaining appropriate boundaries between public and private information.
Human Research Ethics, Privacy and the Internet
Helen Versey, Victorian Privacy Commissioner
"Society has granted a conditional privilege to perform research on human beings... [T]he condition is that it must be conducted in a way that puts the rights and welfare of human subjects first."
Guidelines for the Conduct of Research Involving Human Subjects at the US National Institutes of Health, 2004
This presentation will discuss privacy issues raised by human research, with a particular focus on research using the internet. It will discuss the nature and importance of privacy, and the requirements of privacy law, particularly the Information Privacy Act 2000 (Vic), the Health Records Act 2001 (Vic) and the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth), in relation to online collection and notice, consent, use and disclosure, data quality, data security, and storage of data using cloud computing services. It will canvass privacy and ethics in relation to social media/networking sites, and in particular types of records (e.g. adoption, donor conception, out-of-home care).
Respecting Rights in Information Management Processes and Practices
Gavan McCarthy, Director eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC), the University of Melbourne.
In this presentation, Gavan McCarthy will discuss emerging information access methods and models which attempt to embrace the complexities, incorporate the dynamics, take into account plurality and diversity, and encourage greater transparency. Using examples from a number of research data management projects in which the ESRC has been involved in, he will reflect on how a focus on archival and library management principles can lead the reshaping of access regimes and practices. He will also highlight the need for new instruments of professional practice that may better take on the ethical challenges of research and human data management.
Helen Versey, the Victorian Privacy Commissioner qualified as a lawyer in the United Kingdom and immigrated to Australia in 1982. She worked in private legal practice in the United Kingdom, Darwin and Perth, specialising mainly in criminal law, family law and personal injuries litigation. Before moving to Melbourne, Victoria in December 2001, Helen worked for 13 years specialising in anti discrimination law as the senior lawyer and from time to time Acting Commissioner at the Western Australian Equal Opportunity Commission. Helen has a combined honours degree in law and sociology from Exeter University, U.K. She is trained as a mediator. Helen was previously Deputy Privacy Commissioner from December 2001 until her appointment as Privacy Commissioner for Victoria, in March 2007.
Gavan McCarthy is a Senior Research Fellow and Director at the eScholarship Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. He is a leader in the field of cultural informatics with emphasis on the building of sustainable information resources and services to support research. He started work in the academic sector with the Australian Science Archives Project (ASAP: 1985-1999), based in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne. It was here he pioneered the development of national information services and infrastructure to support the history of Australian science, technology, medicine and engineering through the utilization of the emerging digital technologies. McCarthy is noted in Australia and overseas for his innovative and research-driven approach to the challenges posed by digital technologies for the support of scholarship and sustainable knowledge.