Abstract
Building on the success of the 2002โ2004 Global Information Village Plazas, this symposium maintains its interactive format, allowing ASIS&T members an opportunity to express their personal views about the challenges and opportunities that the information society represents in their personal and professional lives.
The discussion will focus on the issue of trust in information โ specifically on how information professionals and members of a general public judge the authority of the information they receive. The discussion will pay particular attention to the way in which perceptions of trust change in different cultural contexts โ for example in societies and cultures that allow their citizens greater individual freedoms in comparison to more rigid or collective societies and cultures.
This topic relates specifically to the theme of this year's conference โ Shaping the Digital Future for All โ in that information crosses national boundaries on a daily basis. Information shared between cultures can be subject to diverse perceptions of trust, which in turn affects a person's views of the value of an increasingly global information society in their personal and professional lives. The issue of trust in information is also relevant to librarians and information professionals, who must address questions such as what their role in building trust is, and how they may accomplish this in an era of global digital information, where users may turn to multiple sources of information of varying degrees of authority or subjectivity.
This year's Global Information Village Plaza adds a new information and communication tool in the form of a blog, built and maintained by the same team who maintained the blog for the 2005 ASIS&T conference. This online interactive forum will be reachable by any professional, thereby allowing ASIS&T to expand its circle of interaction and offering the information professional community around the globe who will be unable to attend the 2006 Annual Meeting an opportunity to contribute their thoughts on trust in information.