This week I received a formal reply to my July 2 letter to the Shorewood, Wisconsin Public Library regarding its requiring I provide my social security number to obtain a library card, that confirms the anecdotal evidence that the library…
Read More Further Update on Local Library SSN Practices – Divulgence is Voluntary
Reporting again from the SAA conference, I attended an excellent panel this morning on "Archival Ethics with Changing Practices: The Impact of Technology" (program; wiki page), featuring some excellent presentations on the way new information technology is spurring new ethical…
Read More Archival Ethics with Changing Practices: The Impact of Technology
I'm spending the next few days at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists in San Francisco, and I'm looking forward to learning more about many of the ethical and policy issues confronted by archivists in an…
Read More Values in Design: Defining a Privacy-Aware Model for Web Access to Archives
While I never received a reply to my letter to the Shorewood, Wisconsin Public Library regarding its requiring I provide my social security number to obtain a library card, I do have anecdotal evidence that the library might have changed…
Continuing the theme of privacy issues related to my new home library system (and I still haven't received any reply from the Shorewood Public Library regarding their collection of patron social security numbers), the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the…
Read More Local Library uses RFID to Manage Materials, but Privacy Concerns Abound
[Update here, and here] Blogging has been extremely light as I'm in the process of relocating to Milwaukee. To that end, I recently visited my local community's public library to sign up for a card, and was shocked to see that…
Chronicles of Dissent reports the story of librarian Brenda Biesterfeld, who says she was fired after alerting authorities that a patron was viewing child pornography on library computers. Apparently she notified her supervisor (Hill) who told her merely to give…
Read More Librarian Fired for Reporting Child Porn Web Surfing, but Questions Linger
Chronicles of Dissent points to this troubling story of a county in Oregon that is outsourcing the operation of their (formerly public) libraries to Library Systems and Services (LSSI), a private, for-profit company. LSSI tries to downplay any affect privitizing…
Paul Neuhaus, a reference librarian at Santa Clara University, has assembled a wiki of state laws on the confidentiality of library records. This is a great resource providing instant access to the relevant statutes, such as New York's: New York…
Read More Wiki of State Laws on the Confidentiality of Library Records
Continuing the theme of libraries, privacy, and intellectual freedom from a few weeks ago, two items popped up in my blogroll today: Wired's Threat Level tells an incredible story about the plight of two Connecticut librarians who received national security…
Read More A Bit More on Libraries, Privacy, and Intellectual Freedom
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