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Hello all.

As promised I have below summarised the comments which have been sent to me


For my own submission I although there is liability in terms of legal
obligations such as Health and Safety, SENDA etc.  as this is covered in
another section I'm not going to go into detail about it in
this section (bearing in mind the confines of the word limit!)

There is also the element that refers to some sectors of liability for the
information provided - I guess like medical or legal libraries etc. who
could potentially be liable for providing incorrect information.  I can
refer to my old job at an investment bank for this bit as we had to run
press searches and provide documents to support new client approval checks
to comply with money-laundering legislation and the bank could be held
accountable for not doing rigorous enough due dilligence searches on dodgy
characters!

I think, however, that I will concentrate mainly on quality issues and
audits etc. and leave the main discussion of Health and Safety etc for
section 4.1 - 'The legal regulatory issues affecting the services and
sectors in which you have worked'

I have found with other sections that there is an overlap and so I have
tried to plan the sections so I don't waste precious word limit with loads
of duplication.

Good luck to all!

Kate



Summary of people's comments:

I am answering this Q on the basis that it means liability of the service
to users. We have internet policies for pupils who want to use on-line
reading groups to protect their identities.

My interpretation of this was to think about the quality of the
information that we provide (checking that it's up-to-date) and the
problems that incorrect information or non-accurate information could
cause ie wasting enquirers time.  Also to think about the authority of
web-sites to ensure accuracy.

Liability I took as health and safety, freedom of info, DDA, rtc.

I've looked at liability in the context of my work (which is providing
business information) and the necessity of terms and conditions and
disclaimers to protect ourselves with regard to information provision.

I have taken 'liability' to mean 'legal responsibility' in terms of e.g.
data protection act, disability discrimination act, health and safety,
child protection.

I covered issues such as researching material for our scientists to use
for evidence in court cases.. also proofreading/ quality checking for
finance contracts (our role as information managers to promote best
practice and standards) and copyright/ data protection could be mentioned
under this heading as well.

As a health librarian I talked about the issues around literature
searching and decisions based on the evidence provided by library staff.
I talked about disclaimers etc.I think I may also have mentioned people
relying on library staff and not taking responsibility themselves for the
information found - i.e. the reference interview being unproductive because
 they're not giving the info the librarian needs to find the right
resources.

Personally I think it means liability for quality information eg if you
work in the library of a large drugs company and you tell an enquirer that
it is OK to put arsenic in the new drug they are working on, you might be
liable for the consequences, or, if you work in a library giving advice to
people travelling abroad and you tell them they need no inoculations and
the place they are going is safe and when they get there it is a warzone
and there are loads of diseases then you might find yourself in trouble.
Likewise in a law library there are bound to be lots of instances where
you would need to be very careful about the qulaity of info you give out.
However, for many libraries the info they are disemminating is subjective,
or open to dispute, so I don't think they could be sued eg if they made a
mistake about a Romano-British mosaic's time of manufacture.