Closing your Curtains… and other ways to protect your privacy!

Coombs, Karen (2005) Protecting User Privacy in the Age of Digital Libraries. Computers in Libraries. V 25 No. 6.

I can’t believe this week is already here, the last week of LSC 555. I still couldn’t tell you all I have learned in this class, but my technology skills have definitely improved! The articles this week were focused on the Web, again. They focused specifically on Web privacy. The first article I read was written by an electronic services librarian at SUNY. The focus of this paper was to analyze what information libraries should protect. During the process of “going digital” at the SUNY libraries the author claims to have learned five things. These things are: that a privacy policy is more important than a written document, data can be stored in places most don’t think of, purging of user data can affect the library’s ability to function, the places user data is stored are not always controlled by the library, and finally privacy policies are constantly changing things. What a fascinating experience this must have been for this librarian! To be perfectly honest the thought of privacy being an expectation while being in a public library was absolutely beyond me! I am not necessarily sure I agree that privacy should be an expectation, but regardless this article provided a wealth of information on the importance of privacy in libraries.
There were a number of things that stood out to me while reading this article. I think the first thing that struck me was that the ALA actually has recommendations for the protection of user privacy. These recommendations are limiting the degree to which personally identifiable information is monitored, collected, disclosed and distributed. They also recommend that you avoid creating unnecessary records (a fairly vague direction in my personal opinion), as well as avoid retaining records that are not needed for efficient operation of the library (which again in my opinion goes against what the library stands for in general). Finally they suggest that libraries avoid practices and procedures that place personally identifiable information in public view. I don’t in any way mean to sound trite, but these are pretty vague directions, and in some ways seem to contradict what libraries stand for in the first place. I discussed this a bit in my research paper on wikis, how digital diaries (as they have been described) are works that should be saved and recorded. The ALA seems to disagree. So then, my question based on this article is this: how much privacy do people really deserve to expect when using a publicly sponsored service?

Siva Vaidhyanathan (2005) The Googlization of Everything and the Future of Copyright http://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/Vol40/Issue3/DavisVol40No3_Vaidhyanathan.pdf

In a really neat article on the scholar project recently taken on by Google, Siva Vaidhyanathan (2005) discusses the pros and cons of Google’s plans to digitize millions of copyrighted books. In fact, the author goes so far as to suggest that Google’s project may well bring about the most disruptive copyright battle since the invention of sound recording technology. I really found this article interesting, and my husband (a phd computer science student was equally interested). Essentially this author argues that the Google Library Project will force a judge to make a sweeping decision regarding copyright law, that will not only adversely affect the Library project, but the “free culture” movement as well.
I won’t lie, this was a long article to read, it threw a lot of cases at the reader, and though using simple language was a bit complex at times to follow. The things that stood out to me the most about this article was the author’s concern that something considered a “flagship” freedom of information project, will actually destroy the potential for free information in the future. Essentially, Google may ruin things for everyone else, because of how legislators will react. I am still not sure where I stand on this issue, but look forward to researching the problems more, so I can best form an opinion. My question as a result of reading this article is: Did we really see such sweeping litigation as a result of the Napster fallout, that we have evidence to actually believe that there will be adverse effects to this project?