Giving library-patrons the ability to “opt-out” of various privacy-compromising services is a good thing to do, but it’s really not that different from what most commercial companies also offer. We would not be part of the problem, but shouldn’t we, as libraries, try to be part of the solution? Unlike private companies, our goal is not profit (and profiting from our users’ information). Rather, most libraries serve the public and are driven by principles (open access to information and intellectual freedom among them). As such, I think libraries could go a step beyond the rest of the commercial world when it comes to privacy issues. Rather than just have a small privacy statement hidden somewhere on our website, let’s have a visible, ever-present link to a entire page devoted to educating our users on the issue of privacy.

A good book on the changing nature of privacy (and changing perception of privacy) is The Digital Person, by Daniel J. Solove.

The library I work in now keeps Customers’ hold out on shelves (where once they were in the back room) in the Public Area of the library for them to be able to pick-up at will and charge out via Self-Check kiosks. Many of our long time customers are not happy with this practice and no longer want to place holds on items because they believe having their items shelved in the public area is an invasion of privacy.

To insure their “privacy”…we now print only the 1st four letters of their last names and the 1st initial of their first name. Then we wrap each and EVERY item in a piece of 8.5 x 11 piece of paper (sometimes recycled) and tape it closed! This insures (?) that no other customer can see what other customers are reading/requesting.

Here’s the problem: many times customers have the same first 4 letters and first initial of their names…so people inadvertently pick up and look at other peoples requests, or nosy people will merely, pull off the wrapper to see if there is anything new & interesting that they want to order for themselves. Thus jeopardizing “privacy”.

Time wise, it is now taking staff double the time to process holds. Resource wise, we are using double the paper (Sirsi automatically prints out a receipt w/ the customer’s full name and title on it), and excessive amount of tape.

Personally, I believe that privacy, use of resources & processing time was optimum when we kept the Holds behind the Circulation Desk.

So what’s a person to do…but move forward w/ the vision of “self-service” and Library 2.0 and hope that customers only peruse their own Holds.