Taking the Fight for Digital Rights to Our Libraries

Increasingly, the library is the place where people trust—and use—not just the librarian at the help desk, but also the search engine, online catalogs, digital archives, and electronic databases. So when patrons come into the library to find out about a sexually transmitted disease, for example, they will likely find themselves interacting with the online library—a messy mixture of library-specific digital tools and broader Internet resources that create all sorts of privacy risks for patrons.

Here’s how the library encounters privacy risks. Increasingly, the library contracts with a number of third parties to run various services, for example, OverDrive for e-book services, Bibliocommons for interactive catalogs, and ProQuest for electronic and magazine databases. Companies like these have the power to set their terms of service. That includes protecting the details of what patrons do when they use such tools or not. Not too long ago, library professionals caught Adobe Digital Editions transmitting patrons’ e-reading information in an unencrypted manner. Designed to seamlessly integrate with a library’s website, most services don’t make it obvious to a patron that a private company makes choices about her user data.