Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Ethical Considerations In Web 2.0 Archives, Antoinette E. Baker

School of Information Student Research Journal

In April 2010, the Internet company Twitter announced that it had granted its entire archive of “Tweets” to the Library of Congress. These Tweets are typically generated by public users, who may or may not understand or expect that their submissions will be archived by a government agency. Archives of Web 2.0 material raise new ethical considerations for archivists, who must balance interests in preserving material with privacy interests of users who generated the content. Archivists can address these concerns by requiring corporate donors to fully disclose the nature of the archive to users and by allowing users to opt-out …