Protecting user privacy in the age of digital libraries

This article is a about the authors experiences in trying to establish protocols to protect library usage data. Although libraries have a right to, and perhaps and obligation to do so, she found very little guidance in how to do so -especially with the ILS. This, as a result, became an onerous and technical task that required a lot of investigative work.

It becomes clear in the article that a standard of privacy protocols need to be established within the profession. It's one thing to say that this is a duty, but real change will not come about unless the there is actual guidance to do so. This means requiring ILS and other service providers to adhere to these guidelines to ensure that all patrons enjoy the same protections in all libraries.

The question is whether is if such standardization is possible or if the will is present to do so?

Coombs, K. A. Protecting User Privacy in the Age of Digital Libraries. Computers in Libraries v. 25 no. 6 (June 2005) pp. 16-20