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To aid understanding of the use or value of resources and services the Library may aggregate and retain user data for a reasonable period of time. It will, however, neither collect nor retain information identifying individuals except during the period when and only for the purpose that such record is necessary to furnish a specific service (for example, loaning a book, ordering a report, recording user service preferences, or for internal service evaluation). Data on individuals will not be shared with third parties unless if required by law.
For examples of how this policy applies to specific services or programs, please refer to the Practice Guidelines that follow.
Circulation
It is the policy of the Library that the privacy of all borrowers of library
materials shall be respected. The Library will not reveal the names of individual
borrowers nor reveal what books are, or have been, charged to any individual.
When library users need books that are on loan, the units with circulation responsibility will assist them by calling in those books as soon as the guaranteed loan period (usually three weeks) has ended. If the books desired are in a renewal period, they will be recalled immediately.
Collection Development and Resource Management
Comments, purchase recommendations, gifts-in-kind, and special requests from
users make an important contribution to building and shaping the Library's collections.
Purchase, transfer, and related collection management requests linked to individual
users-- or even group of users (e.g., the History Department)-- are deemed confidential
reader information and not shared outside the Library. Within the Library, user
names are temporarily attached to internal records and shared among relevant
staff to facilitate notification of Library actions and follow-through.
Contracts and Licenses for Information Resources
Consistent with its user privacy policy the Library expects its information
service providers to follow the same standards in the performance of the products
they license, lease or sell to the Library. Contracts, licenses, agreements
and arrangements that the Library enters shall accordingly and as the standard
practice protect the identity of individual users and the information they use.
To provide additional personalized services (for example, help in using resources, profiling user interests for subsequent notification) service providers may require users to identify themselves. Such identification will be only at the user's discretion and will require the user to follow clearly indicated procedures before the service is activated. The service provider may not sell, lease, or loan information identifying individual users or the information they use to third parties unless authorized in advance by each user. To aid understanding of the use or value of resources and services, service providers may aggregate and retain anonymized user data.
Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery
Requestors of interlibrary loan and document delivery services receive the same
protection in terms of confidentiality of their requests. In some cases, information
about requests is shared with other library staff for collection development
purposes; it remains confidential within the library. Documentation of requests
may be retained as necessary for the Library to comply with auditing, copyright
or other regulations.
Library Surveys/Assessment Projects
Information and data obtained by the Library or its units through surveys (group
or individual interviews or other means) in support of assessment of services,
collections, facilities, resources, etc., or in support of research related
to library and information services, are considered confidential and will not
be shared except in aggregations, to protect the privacy of individual participants.
Public Access Digital Systems
The Library's access systems (e.g., MIRLYN or various electronic collection
systems) frequently track or "log" the actions performed by users of those systems.
Such transaction level logging that can be tied to individuals may be kept intact
for a limited period of time for trouble- shooting and problem resolution related
to system functions and service transactions. During the period that this information
is retained, it is held in confidence and, in accord with Library policies,
is not shared with third parties. After such period of time as the information
may be reasonably useful for problem resolution, this information may be aggregated
for reporting on types of use and use of materials. Information regarding individual
identities (or the source of the transaction) must be removed. The period of
time needed for storing full transaction level logging should be determined
on a case-by-case basis. Original transaction logging information that has been
processed in this way must be destroyed, and care taken to ensure that backups
or other inadvertently stored forms of the data are not retained.
Final 8 June 2000
Reference Policy updated 11 October 2005
