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Privacy should be a factor in every decision made around library services and the provision of resources. With staffing stretched to the breaking point, and only more so as a result of the pandemic, what strategies and tools could best help libraries ensure good privacy practices? This session will draw upon current scholarship, grant projects, and policy making in librarianship to highlight ways that librarians are engaging with these important issues. The panel features editors and authors from a special issue of Serials Librarian focused on library privacy. Highlights include discussing physical equivalent privacy, third-party tracking systems, and the development of model privacy license language for vendor negotiations. In this session, participants will talk about the latest concerns and what you might do in your library to assure your faculty, staff, and students that their privacy is front of mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces and applies the concept of "physical-equivalent privacy" to evaluate the appropriateness of data collection about library patrons' use of library-provided e-resources. It posits that as a matter of service equity, any data collection practice that causes e-resource users to enjoy less information privacy than users of an information-equivalent print resource is to be avoided. Analysis is grounded in real-world e-resource-related phenomena: secure (HTTPS) library websites and catalogs, the Adobe Digital Editions data-leak incident of 2014, and use of web trackers on e-resource websites. Implications of physical-equivalent privacy for the SeamlessAccess single-sign-on proposal will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ms. Dorothea Salo, Faculty Associate at the School of Library & Information Studies of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argued passionately and cogently about the obligation of librarians to protect the privacy of patrons using electronic serials and the data generated from that usage. Libraries should forcefully express their concerns to vendors of such resources about their collection and commercialization of user data and should stipulate provisions in their contracts and licensing agreements to prevent such misuse of patron’s personal information. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]