From Committees of RUSA: Reflections on the RUSA President’s Program 2015: It’s Complicated: Navigating the Dynamic Landscapes of Digital Literacy, Collapsing Contexts, and Big Data

Abstract

There comes a time when a researcher speaks to librarians and the aftermath of the articulation echoes for days, maybe even weeks. danah boyd’s rapid-paced, information-packed RUSA President’s Program presentation at the ALA Annual Conference 2015 in San Francisco resonated around three topics:

• How technology can complicate our understanding of the world and the people around us by presenting information outside of its original context
• How technology can expand the ways in which we understand the world and the people around us by bringing us into contact with ideas, cultures, and contexts that we would otherwise be unaware
• How increased data collection, and issues of classification, storage, and access are creating challenges to personal privacy