[Koha] Satisfaction with free/open source software: survey invitation

[BWS Johnson]

Salvete!

I have to second that, Brenda. It's rather commonplace for the Ethics
Departments, with psychology in particular, to ensure that data is kept
confidential. There are a number of good reasons for this - for example,
if one were studying reactions to race, folks that _think_ their answers
might be monitored might produce a different answer. (There's a lot of
press about the Bradley effect in US Politics at the moment; this is a
similar thing.) On one hand, it keeps a lot of very cool experiments
from happening. I don't think you'd be able to repeat the Milgram
experiments in quite the same way, for instance. On the other hand, it
protects respondents from touchy answers and pressures they might not
have faced, else. I think we both speak our minds regardless of how
others might react, MJ. I respect you for that, but there are some in
more delicate positions than our own.
The line on what is and is not ethical ia very hazy in the US when it
breaks down to LIS. ALA's kind of irresponsibly sidestepped the issue.
IFLA's been a bit more forthright, fortunately. In general, there just
*isn't* that much on ethics and Library science. There's enough (if you
ask me) on Computer Science (ya'll are almost always ahead of us).
There's some on Law Librarianship (since they're lawyers, and love
rules...) The first hit on google is actually not too bad
http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1820/

I'm kicking myself right now, since I used a book for a presentation on
Ethics, and I can't remember the authors and the title save that it was
published rather recently in the UK, and the whole thing was on Ethics
and Information Science, and in part Library Science. It was short, too.
I think it was purple. (Man I feel like a patron!)

I already took Brenda's survey, and think it's fine for my response to
be a public matter, but I'm not sure there's a way to flag which
response is mine without messing up Brenda's work. Generally if its
anonymised, then it's fair play, but it's hard to do that without
reducing a lot to hard numbers.

Cheers,
Brooke 
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