Troubling "Information Inequality": Critical Reflections on Library and Information Professionals and Global Aid Work

Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals have demonstrated sincere concern with the widespread dispossession that characterizes the global landscape. Though the technical details and practices of LIS responses to such injustice vary, the prevailing understanding is that we, as LIS professionals, can best contribute to ending global inequality by addressing what has come to be known as “information inequality” – that is, the lack of access to information amongst suffering populations. This paper casts a critical eye on the assumptions underlying the concept of “information inequality”, advocating a deeper engagement with questions of language, position, and power in our global aid interventions.