Information possesses value. That value can come in many forms.
Monetary value: You might have heard that we are living in the "Information Age." In past ages, the economy was driven by goods or services, but today the primary economic driver is information. Information is a commodity, bought and sold in a myriad of forms (this includes your personal information, gathered from your online activity!). Information directly fuels industries such as entertainment, marketing, finance, and education, and underlies many more, such as healthcare, manufacturing, even agriculture. Information's economic value is tied to its scarcity, utility, and demand, often measured by how much competitive advantage or profit its possession grants. This is why Intellectual Property (IP) is such a big deal, for example—why Disney or Nintendo will aggressively "defend" their characters from even seemingly innocuous usage by others.
Social value: The flow of information is essential for a healthy democracy and civic life. It enables citizens to critically evaluate public policy, media, and political discourse, ensuring they can make informed voting decisions and hold institutions accountable. Timely access to reliable information facilitates public dialogue on shared challenges (like health or climate), fosters community problem-solving, and preserves collective cultural knowledge. Access to and literacy with information are also fundamental for social inclusion, empowering populations—especially the marginalized—to access resources and understand their rights, countering disparities that lead to an "information elite."
Personal value: Information shapes an individual's identity, competence, and subjective experience of the world. Your own information consumption and creation directly influence your academic success, personal growth, and mental well-being!
Sometimes, the different ways of valuing information can be in conflict. Academic publishing is a good example. The academics who write the papers value the information for one reason, and the publishers value it for another.
The academic publishing model works like this. Academics do research and write articles. They send the articles to peer reviewed journals, where an editor, also an academic, sends it out to several volunteer peer reviewers, who are academics in the same field as the research. The journal publisher then sells that paper to other academics, at often exorbitant prices. The academics who do the research and write the information, and the academics who edit and peer review it, don't see a cent of that profit.
This system used to be a necessary symbiosis. Before the internet, information needed a physical format, and printing costs money. So it seems like a win-win to have a publishing company handle the printing and distribution of the information in exchange for the profits.
The problem is that the publishing companies have grown and want to continue to grow, and they have a laser-like focus on profit. At the same time, new ways of disseminating information have come into existence which do not require the costs of physically printing and distributing information. This has led to a conflict between how academics value information (as a means to contribute knowledge in the field, to demonstrate their expertise, to take part in communities of learning, and to secure tenure and promotion at their institution) and how publishers value information (as a commodity sold to make profit). Whenever you run into a paywall trying to access an article, or find a perfect article abstract in a database only to discover that there is no full text available, you are experiencing this conflict of value. (By the way, never pay for an academic article you find online—the library can get it for you at no cost to yourself!)
Librarians are urging researchers to choose to publish in Open Access journals, which are run exactly the same way as for-profit journals, with academic editing and peer review, but are published on the open internet for anyone to access. Foley Library runs Gonzaga Library Publishing, publishing the Journal of Hate Studies, among others, in an Open Access model. Eventually, all academic publishing will be Open Access. But the publishers are trying very hard to delay this inevitability, so for now most academic publishing is still sold for a profit and hidden behind paywalls.
We just mentioned pay walls for academic articles, but there are other examples of the cost of information. Have you bought tickets to go to a concert? How about payed admission to an exhibit? Perhaps you can describe a few more. Information doesn't exist freely, even in an online world. It costs to create, store, regulate, protect, and access information. Participating in the economy of information pays off because the results of not understanding information's value and settling for information with low credibility can cost you more.
Cost's definition in this situation includes both the expenditure of resources to gain access to information and the consequences of having interacted with that knowledge. Information isn't free. Even if you don't have to pay for immediate access to information, somebody or something will. In other words the more information you access the more responsibility you have for managing its costs ethically. As Uncle Ben told Spider-Man:
In a university setting much of the financial expenditure for information access is offset by your tuition dollars. This funding supports the institution paying for databases or programs which you don't have to individually pay to access. However, by your participation in information systems you participate in the cost, the responsibility for the ripple effects that information usage has in our world.
Patents and copyright are in place to protect the value of someone or a group's intellectual property (IP). The laws around fair use and protection of IP are complicated yet incredibly important. If you end up needing support in interpreting copyright the library's copyright guide can provide you with more information.
Companies should have active measures in place to protect their data and that of their customers. Institutions that handle sensitive information, such as medical records, SSNs, and student grades, are required by law to protect their data. Simple data sharing requires consent, and for the more sensitive information, documentation of permission to share or access that data. The need for information security and protection isn't just relevant for companies, it is important for each individual. Personal information is important to keep safe, as the consequences of inappropriately sharing personal information can be great. Phishing scams for example can lead to huge breaches in information security. Individuals can have their identity stolen, which impacts the security of their bank accounts, retirement, etc. Additionally, large language models have been used to refine the wording of scams and prey on the patterns of people. It is more difficult than ever to distinguish between real business and a scam. As the world of fraud and information breeches becomes more complicated individuals and businesses alike should be proactive in maintaining their protection of information.
On top of information costing literal dollars, there is a ripple effect of the cost of information in society. The choices people make are informed by the resources they have consumed. When people have access to information of value they may make different decisions around career track, healthcare, or their finances than people who who didn't get the same information. A lot of this can be seen in the divisions between socioeconomic groups in the U.S.. While public libraries do a lot of work to remove many of the barriers to credible up-to-date information, they aren't able to reverse the realities of division.
Despite the work of credible producers of information, our society is swamped with bad information. There is a bunch of gobbledygook in our information networks that may be interesting, entertaining, or attractive. Many people do not distinguish between this noisy type of information and information that provides reliable data. Misinformation can dangerously guide people to make decisions and construct their own worldviews on its sandy soils of inaccuracy.
Information's cost also effects our environment. While a computer search engine doesn't emit huge clouds of smoke when it processes your query, that does not exclude it from participating in adverse environmental impacts. Behind the scenes of a casual google search or social media post are data centers which manage the server farms. Server farms are spaces where interconnected computers with immense processing power combine forces to manage large datasets. Packaged in harmless terms like the "cloud" this processing power generates all sorts of ecological waste. As the computers work they release large amounts of heat which is commonly addressed with industrial air conditioning units. When the computers wear out they need to be replaced, a costly and not very recycle friendly process. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that roughly 2% of electricity used in the United States goes to data centers.
