Fake news: neutral or active librarian?

Abstract

The paper deals with the role of libraries and librarians in the fight against fake news, mainly focusing on four issues: 1) the relationship between content selection and content evaluation, which is relevant even in dealing with free on-line content and its discovery tools; 2) the relationship between the librarian’s neutrality and her/his social responsibility in the wake of the growth and the danger of fake news; 3) the two different paradigms represented by ‘neutral’ and ‘active’ or ‘expert’ librarian; 4) the relevance for this discussion of the distinction between different kinds of fake news.