A Quick Chat About Patron Data Privacy During Company Acquisitions and Mergers

Another week, another acquisition. The latest news in the library vendor world came last Monday, with Clairvate purchasing ProQuest at the small sum of $5.63 billion. Academic libraries that subscribe to Web of Science and EndNote with Clairvate and Alma and Primo with ProQuest face the reality that now all of these products are owned …

Ask The Readers – Academic Libraries and Campus Vaccine Requirements

We’re taking it a bit easy this week for a good reason – the designated blog writer just received her second COVID shot. The Executive Assistant isn’t quite ready for the blog writer position just yet, so her writing debut on the blog will have to wait a bit longer. We have a question for …

Deception by Design

Author’s note – This post uses “deceptive design” and “deceptive design patterns” instead of “dark patterns.” Read more about this choice in the “dark UX” entry of Intuit’s content design manual. Take a moment to study the following toggle button for the following privacy setting for “Don’t Not Sell My Personal Information”: Now answer this …

Vendor Ethics and You, Or Giving a Damn About Who’s Sharing Your Patron Data

The news cycle did not stop during our Cherry Blossom Break last week, alas. Last week LexisNexis signed a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide massive amounts of personal information, including financial data, consumer data (such as purchases), and criminal data. The data provided by LexisNexis captures a very intimate view …

Website Maintenance on March 31st

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