Toward a value‐analytic approach to information standards

While developments in information technology enable exciting new potentials, they may, in the process, inadvertently violate important values such as autonomy or privacy. Responsible, ethical approaches to technology warrant the use of critical perspectives in evaluating our technological practices and artifacts. Key among such artifacts are information standards, influential documents that represent and perpetuate community agreements on ideal practice. In critically examining standards, values represent a promising conceptual lens. This paper advances the use of value analysis on information standards, particularly those devoted to knowledge organization. Value analysis is a methodological approach that guides the elicitation of values from artifacts. Two case studies demonstrate the application of value analysis to knowledge organization standards and their resulting data, and show how values and their implications can be discerned from these information artifacts. Value analysis must next be extended beyond standards as documents to examine the fuller ecosystem within which information standards are situated and enacted in order to fully understand their implications, uphold important community values, and maintain ethical information practices.