Just Published – Data Privacy Best Practices Toolkit for Libraries

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

Today we’re happy to announce the publication of the Data Privacy Best Practices Toolkit for Libraries. This toolkit is part of the Data Privacy Best Practices Training for Libraries project, an LSTA-funded collaborative project between the Pacific Library Partnership and LDH focusing on teaching libraries the basics of data privacy. This introduction into data privacy in libraries serves as a guide for both administration and front-line workers, providing practical advice and knowledge in protecting patron data privacy.

The cover page for Data Privacy Best Practices Toolkit for Libraries: A Guide for Managing and Protecting Patron Data.

What does the toolkit cover? The topics range from the data lifecycle and managing vendor relationships to creating policies and procedures to protect patron privacy. The toolkit covers specific privacy concerns in the library, including law enforcement requests, surveillance, and data analytics. We also get to meet Mel and Rafaël, two library patrons who have unique privacy issues that libraries need to consider when thinking about patron privacy.  At the end of the toolkit is an extensive resource section with library privacy scholarship, professional standards, and regulations for further reading.

This toolkit is part of a larger group of resources, including templates and examples libraries can use to develop contract addendums, privacy policies and procedures, and data inventories and privacy risk assessments. In short, there are a lot of resources that are freely available for you to use in your library! Please let us know if you have any questions about the project resources.

Finally, stay tuned – the project is going into its second year, focusing on “train the trainer” workshops for both data privacy and cybersecurity. We’ll keep you updated as more materials are published!

Website Maintenance on March 31st

Starting at 7 PM PDT, the LDH website and email will experience intermittent outages as we upgrade our server.