New Checklists Provide Practical Steps to Protect Patron Privacy

From the American Library Association

The American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) approved seven new “privacy checklists” at the 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia to help libraries of all types and capacities take practical steps to protect patron privacy. The checklists complement the Library Privacy Guidelines approved by the IFC in 2016. The checklists include:

• Library Privacy Checklist Overview
• Library Privacy Checklist for Data Exchange Between Networked Devices and Services
• Library Privacy Checklist for E-book Lending and Digital Content Vendors
• Library Privacy Checklist for Library Management Systems / Integrated Library Systems
• Library Privacy Checklist for Library Websites, OPACs, and Discovery Services
• Library Privacy Checklist for Public Access Computers and Networks
• Library Privacy Checklist for Students in K-12 Schools

The guidelines are now available online on the ALA website. The IFC Privacy Subcommittee encourages anyone with comments or questions to email its ALA staff liaison, Deborah Caldwell-Stone in the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at dstone@ala.org.

Brian Greene, Library Development Manager for the Wyoming State Library, serves as the Intellectual Freedom Advisor for the Wyoming Library Association. He may be reached at brian.greene@wyo.gov or (307) 777-6339.