Original - Information Matters

Information privilege helps us see how access and visibility shape what becomes credible, legitimate, and shareable knowledge. It refers not only to unequal access to information, often structured by institutional affiliation, education, class, or social position, but also to unequal access to the means of making experience intelligible. In scholarly communication, this usually appears through paywalls, subscriptions, databases, and prestige economies. Yet information privilege also operates through language. As discussions from the Association of College & Research Libraries have suggested, access to information is inseparable from access to the systems that authorize what counts as legitimate knowledge.

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March 16, 2026 Lynne Bowker

Breaking Down Language Barriers to Reduce Information Privilege in Scholarly Communication

For decades, English has been a lingua franca in the research community, where it has become the principal language for publishing and conferences. But when one main language is used to share information, knowledge of this language is also needed to access information. In this way, English has become linked to information privilege: people who have mastered English can access scholarly information more easily than people who are less comfortable in this language. This has ripple effects, influencing the extent to which scientists can participate fully in scholarly communication. While the problems are clear, the solutions are trickier.

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March 16, 2026 Tami Oliphant

From Access to Epistemology: Rethinking Information Privilege

The systems, tools, and practices developed by Big Tech and academic publishers that we use daily in our personal and professional lives have created inequitable and unjust information environments and societies. This is due to the concentrated power, extreme wealth, and influence in the hands of the few.

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March 16, 2026 Lance Masilungan

Transgender Information Sharing: Reject Tradition, Trust Each Other

“Transgender” is no longer a foreign word in the Philippines, nor are transgender Filipinos allowing discrimination to hold them back. Though LGBTQIA+ minority groups in the Philippines are still seen as “deviant, immoral, or even illegal” by the wider population, transgender Filipinos do not let that stop them from thriving. Instead of relying on traditional sources of information and risking intolerance from Filipino society, they create, recreate, and distribute information they’ve made themselves for both education and community solidarity.

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March 16, 2026 Simon Philip Sacramento

The Vantage Point: Reflections on Information Privilege as a Physician-Librarian

As a librarian (occasionally practicing) and a practicing physician, I often encounter workplace issues that would be better resolved with a little perspective from the information field. Problems, such as the need to search for reliable information in order to treat a particularly challenging medical case, are commonplace. This can be a frustrating but fascinating experience, as I, being an information professional, have some intrinsic knowledge of the issues that make solving these problems a challenge.

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March 11, 2026 Tova Harris

Who Gets to Train the Machine? AI, Race, and Storytelling in Library Makerspaces

As generative AI tools move into library makerspaces, they do more than draft metadata or translate text—they reflect the power structures embedded in the spaces where they are deployed. Without intentional design, we risk automating the very inequities libraries seek to dismantle.

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March 6, 2026 Sheng-Hsiang Lance Peng

AI and Modern Wars: How the 2026 US‑Israeli Strikes Rewired the Kill Chain

War has always been a theatre of speed, strategy and chaos but today, the performers are changing. No longer confined to generals, pilots and analysts, artificial intelligence has marched into the war room and pirouetted across screens and networks with a poise that is terrifying and exhilarating. As Craig Jones, a lecturer at Newcastle University, notes, AI now compresses the “kill chain,” shrinking the time from target identification to destruction in ways almost unimaginable in previous conflicts. In essence, bombs can drop faster than the speed of thought.

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March 5, 2026 Janice Roman-Tamesis

Information Privilege and the Urban South: Lessons from Doing Tondo Studies

Information privilege is usually framed as unequal access to journals and databases. But place-based research in Tondo shows it also shapes which cities become legible in scholarship, how Urban South communities must be narrated to be publishable, and who benefits from the knowledge produced. Drawing from fieldwork in Isla Puting Bato, this essay traces how information, visibility, and authority are distributed, and offers practical ways scholars can help research travel back across paywalls, institutions, and languages.

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March 4, 2026 Nove E Variant Anna

From Uneven Access to Shared Support: Responding to Information Privilege

This is what information privilege looks like in practice: the ability of some people to access information that others cannot, shaped by affiliation and economic context. It also shapes visibility in which work becomes easy to find, cite, and treat as “authoritative.” The ACRL Framework’s “Information Has Value” frame invites us to examine how information is embedded in economic and social systems, and how unequal access influences what counts as legitimate and trustworthy knowledge.

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March 3, 2026 Azeez Adeoye

The Forgotten Jewel of a Good Book: A Compass to Modern Discoveries such as the Internet, Search Engines, and Generative AI

Many have argued about the place of technology, computer systems and their paraphernalia such as e-books, audiobooks, and websites, whether they are a blessing or a curse. Nevertheless, the products of past civilisations, such as the discovery of paper and the invention of the movable printing press, books, and writing itself, remain the true success stories behind all modern emerging technologies.