Coombs, K. A. (2005) Protecting user privacy in the age of digital libraries. Computers in Libraries, 25:6. 16-20.

Summary

This article is an account of one librarian's and one library's effort to ensure its users' privacy. Coombs works at the SUNY Courtland library, and she systematically addressed the user data each of their systems was storing and determined what should be kept and what should be discarded.

What I learned

I think the most interesting part of the article is the balance libraries have to strike between maintaining user privacy but also obtaining the data and statistics to help in collection development, strategic planning, etc. Having the demographics and other data about the library's users helps the library to tailor its services and better spend its money, but that same data is also often a privacy concern, especially in a post-USA-PATRIOT-Act world.

What I am taking away

It's about balance! And as much as I like data, the users' privacy and sense of privacy is more important.

Discussion question

Are there any systems that store data that she forgot about? Or that have developed since the article was written in 2005?