APLA 2019

Manning, Raghavan, and Schütze (2008) define information retrieval as “finding material...of an unstructured nature...that satisfies an information need from within large collections.” In today’s modern information-dense society, information retrieval takes place both within and beyond library walls. And, as critical librarians state, from policies to services, libraries are “never neutral.” But, libraries are no longer the unique gatekeepers to the information universe. Thus the question arises, is a lack of neutrality unique to libraries? To address this question, this presentation aims to provide a solid overview of the present-day research on bias and diversity in popular algorithms and information retrieval systems while observing this analysis from the perspective of critical librarianship.