Making space for the future: the importance of deletion for librarianship and information science and the information society

Abstract

The information society generally, and information studies specifically, are understandably concerned with productive actions done with data and information, like preservation, access, and (re)use over time. While such concerns are important and their related activities are clearly valuable, we will soon be facing limits to storage and related resources, and so information scholars and practitioners must more fully consider and support the complementary part of the information lifecycle: deletion. We outline the growing necessity of data and information deletion for social and environmental sustainability through several example concerns. We then consider several challenges of and to deleting that must be considered and addressed, from societal to individual scales, by drawing on works in information behaviour, personal information management, human-computer interaction, and the history, philosophy, and ethics of information. Deletion is an understudied phenomenon of growing importance, and although it has a broadly negative perception in comparison to preservation, it has some notable advantages for individuals and society. Information scholars and practitioners have an important role to play in understanding and supporting deletion; recommendations for each are provided here.