LITA Forum 2015 - Patron Privacy

The second and third sessions I attended at this year's LITA forum were both on patron privacy issues, so I'll combine them here into a single post.

The first of these sessions was made by Todd Carpenter of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO).  He explained the process that NISO has been going through, with collaboration from libraries, publishers, and vendors to establish a set of standards for how much data from users is collected, what restrictions are put into place on the collection of data, and how that data can be used.

This topic has been a kind of Catch 22 for libraries for the past few years.  Libraries, by ethical mandate and by law, do not retain information about patrons and the use of the materials they borrow past such point as materials have been returned and any fines are paid.  At the same time patrons, not understanding the fact libraries have this policy or just not understanding the full ramifications of those policies, get frustrated by the fact we can't do something like Amazon does and recommend new titles based on reading history.  This situation makes libraries look like they are backwards in their ability to provide this kind of service, when it's at least partly because our hands are tied when it comes to collecting data and using it in this way.

Given this history, any adjustment to library behavior is controversial within libraries but there is also a strong feeling, particularly at public libraries, that it is necessary to do something to address the fact that we haven't been able to offer a service that our heaviest users expect us to be able to offer.

The NISO initiative attempts to put forward solutions on how to resolve this problem.  The initial process involved a series of meetings with different stakeholders to hammer out basic principles.  These principles are collected into a draft document that is to be published soon and includes concepts such as that patrons need to opt-into such systems (no one is having information collected without their express consent), that data needs to be anonymized as much as possible, should be used only for providing service to the individuals, and that the information should be available to users.

This initial document will be a high-level overview of the problems and will be followed by other documents establishing best practices and other kinds of implementation details.

This session was followed by a session by Jim Jonas of the University of Wisconsin.  His talk focused on privacy education, arguing that in the Internet age that "privacy literacy" should be as much of a part of library service as literacy has historically been.  Jim described the overall state of the Internet and modern data collection that makes privacy literacy an important topic and why libraries are particularly well situated for providing this kind of information.  He then went through an hour-long class that he has offered in which he introduces to users some privacy concepts, why privacy is important, and some approaches for maintaining one's privacy.  He plans to also offer a follow-up class describing specific tools for managing privacy.

Jim also provided copies of the presentations he uses for his classes as well as a privacy resources page that he maintains for the University of Wisconsin.

I found both of these presentations informative and agree that we should offer programs on privacy.  One concern that was expressed by someone attending the program that I felt was well-stated is that it is hard to get people to be excited about going to classes like this.  Finding a good angle to make the class appealing is probably one of the biggest challenges in offering this kind of programming.