Privacy in the Context of Content Platforms and Discovery Tools

Instead of looking away or ignoring the situation, I had to acknowledge the freedom I experienced on a daily basis and the obstacles that impeded the experiences and basic dignity of the disabled community.

Until recently, the widespread re­examination of library design principles largely stopped at the bathroom door. But that’s changing as awareness spreads that many patrons identify as transgender, non­binary, agender, genderfluid, or otherwise don’t fall within the male/female binary.

The rise of evidence-based practices and assessment in libraries in recent years, combined with tying outcomes to future funding and resource allotments, has made libraries more reliant on patron data to determine how to allocate limited resources and funding. Libraries who want to use data for research and analysis but also wanting to protect patron privacy find themselves wondering how to balance these two priorities. This article explores The Seattle Public Library’s attempt to strike the balance between patron privacy and data analysis with the use of a data warehouse with de-identified patron data, as well as implications of data warehouses and de-identification as an option for other libraries.

EXEMPLARY patron-privacy policy.

Library Linked Data for building knowledge cards. Contribute to UW-Madison-Library/bibcard development by creating an account on GitHub.

The utter dolts we're up against.

In the spring of 2017, members of the CaMMS Recruitment & Mentoring Committee solicited volunteers on various email lists who were willing to share information about their positions on the ALCT…

Have you heard of the General Data Protection Regulation? If you’re living in Europe, chances are you have. GDPR imposes a series of changes to the personal data privacy laws in the European Union and will go into effect on 25 May 2018. The new regulation will replace the current Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. It […]

On the hypocrisy of publishing about OA/DH in closed venues, and why it happens anyway.

The magazine has made a rare, and refreshing, admission of past racism. But its most recent cover story undermines this corrective.

Information technology (IT) is vitally important to many organizations, including libraries. Yet a review of employment statistics and a citation analysis show that men make up the majority of the IT workforce, in libraries and in the broader workforce. Research from sociology, psychology, and women’s studies highlights the organizational and social issues that inhibit women. Understanding why women are less evident in library IT positions will help inform measures to remedy the gender disparity.

Academic librarians have embraced tools such as e-mail or chat that allow them to deliver reference services virtually, but not many studies have advocated for using social networking sites (SNS) as a medium for answering user questions. Even as reference departments field fewer questions requiring in-depth resources or responses, librarians have not consistently examined how SNS might be employed for simple informational inquiries from university students who already view those sites as information-seeking tools. One such SNS is Yik Yak, a mobile app launched in 2013 that allows users to pose anonymous questions in a limited geographic range, such as a college or university campus. This study is an exploratory analysis of the postings on Yik Yak in the geographic area of a four-year, regional public institution during the 2015–2016 academic year. It argues that libraries should be more intentional about monitoring emerging information ecosystems such as Yik Yak to share their knowledge with users and to identify potential issues with library services.

In this chapter we perform a meta-analysis and synthesize existing critical library and information studies work into a cohesive approach to critical systems librarianship, informed by diverse perspectives and ethical lenses. We seek to enable and facilitate a critically-informed, reflective, and reflexive approach to systems work with specific focus on how information technologies are applied in library work. Critical systems librarianship centrally involves critical reflection which allows systems workers to question the underlying values, assumptions, and power relations ingrained in their daily practices and the institutions within which they work: this is essential to both theoretical questioning and developing strategies to contest power imbalances.

Library couldn't tell who the insider jerks were because they were using a "generic login."

Some corporations, Ayala said, are laboriously setting up two different privacy systems, one for Europe and another for the US. However, the major players are unifying their rules to comply with the GDPR, “which is an indicator that European trends are starting to become global trends. Facebook and Google just rolled out new privacy centers … Continue reading The Future of Data Privacy →

US demographics are changing, so an organization welcoming more diverse audiences than it did a decade ago is an expectation, not necessarily an achievement. A goal is to welcome diverse audiences at a representative rate relative to the population. TheRead More ›

Interesting. Analytics sans actual patron data.