Tag: tropes

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There’s a Post About That!

There’s a saying that makes the rounds at the LDH office – “same problems, different day.” While there is no shortage of unique and exciting privacy challenges out there, eventually there will be a version of a previous privacy issue we dealt with in the past that pops up in our daily work. The same goes for the general privacy discourse in the library world. It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the library discourse where we see versions of the same topics and issues discussed in the past. It can feel like we’re stuck in a time loop, reliving the same conversations.

Bill Murray from the movie Groundhog Day reporting on the holiday celebrations in a small town - "Well, it's Groundhog Day... again."
We know we’re a couple months away from Groundhog Day, but still…
GIF source – https://giphy.com/gifs/pr-13USAwkGCTd6xy

Luckily, this gives LDH the opportunity to highlight relevant posts from the Tip of The Hat! Whether you missed the posts the first time around or are looking to revisit some of our older content, the newsletter-turned-blog has covered a lot of ground in the library privacy world. Let’s take some time to review some of those posts as the library world revisits several privacy conversations this week.

Mergers and Acquisitions and Consolidation oh my!

It’s official – Clarivate’s acquisition of Proquest is finally complete, furthering the consolidation of the library vendor marketplace. The acquisition isn’t the first one that led many in the library community to worry about the consequences of having only a handful of companies controlling the marketplace and what effects this consolidation would have on data privacy. In addition, there’s the practical concern of what exactly happens to patron data when a business is acquired or goes bankrupt. Here are some previous posts that touch on the relationship between vendors and library data privacy:

The Library Privacy Trope That Nevers Die

Libraries full of dusty books. Librarians reading all day on the job. Librarians shushing patrons. No matter where you go, there’s always a version of one of these tropes whenever libraries come up in the conversation. Most of the time, you find these tropes being brought up by people who don’t work at libraries, be it news reporters with cringeworthy article openers (“Libraries are no longer for books!”) to everyday conversation (“library quiet”). However, sometimes libraries themselves indulge in using library tropes for their own purposes. This week was no different with a social media account for a public library system in the US creating a meme about how the library doesn’t track patron use of library materials.

Longtime readers of the blog might recall our library privacy trope post from last year detailing the dangers of the trope to libraries and patrons. While the profession has a strong ethical mandate to protect patron privacy, including patron data, the reality is that libraries are subject to the same data privacy constraints and issues that show up in any other industry. For example, libraries and their vendors keep track of which patrons use specific resources and services. A library failing to let patrons know how the library or vendor collects, processes, and shares patron data or misrepresents library data privacy practices in communications to patrons is at risk of an ethics breach, losing the trust of their patrons.

While it might be fun to poke fun at the data privacy practices of commercial companies, libraries are best served to remember that they are not above engaging in the same privacy-invasive practices as their commercial counterparts. Case in point – the growth of customer relationship management systems in libraries and how the use of a CRM led a library to be investigated by a civil grand jury. Another case in point – many libraries still use Google Analytics to track patron use of the library website. In any case, meme responsibly.

When Privacy and Security Become a Barrier unto Themselves

A recent Twitter thread touched on many patrons’ struggles with multifactor authentication and how library workers encounter this struggle daily. Take some time to read the thread and the replies. It is a good reminder that not all privacy and security controls work for everyone. In some cases, these controls create barriers to using the library. These controls can disproportionally affect patrons who, for example, do not have reliable access to a mobile phone or limited phone service if the library or vendor requires all patrons to use multifactor authentication for using library resources or services.

Privacy and equity are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes the choices libraries make can put some patrons in a bind, particularly when libraries move core services to newer platforms that collect more data about patron use of the service than before. Our post about ethical design in library privacy practices is a good starting point to consider how to center patrons in how your library approaches patron services and programs.

[Related – sometimes your data privacy and security policies for staff are a liability in themselves! We touched on this liability last October using administrator privileges on work computers. As you think about what data privacy and security measures to put in place at your library, take some time to think about the costs and benefits of each measure. Sometimes it’s better – both for the bottom line and for data privacy and security – to accept certain risks.]

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Libraries, Privacy, and… Tropes?

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

A popular way to procrastinate at LDH is to dig through the pile of articles and other literature about all facets of privacy: regulations, ethics, practices, current events… the current events pile is at overcapacity at the moment. In these piles of articles, we come across one particular trope that we’d like to address – libraries as exemplars of privacy ethics and practices.

This trope is similar to others in other mainstream stories that use libraries as exemplars for other things, such as community engagement, democracy, and learning centers. The “library as privacy exemplar” trope coexists with these other tropes, sometimes in the same story. Other times the trope is front and center of an article. An example of this is an IAPP article about general privacy practices at the library. At best, this article demonstrates the attitude and tone of how many writers think about the library as an enlightened entity with their focus on privacy. Near the end of the article comes another trait that these articles tend to share, which is modeling privacy practices off of the library profession: “While library culture tilts heavily in favor of protecting the ‘citizen from state’ intrusion, that same culture can be mobilized to advocate for ‘customer’ privacy as well in relation to third-party service providers.”

All of this leads us to a hidden danger in the “library as privacy exemplar” trope, which is unquestioned trust in libraries in all matters of privacy and data ethics. Some of that trust has been earned – there are several library privacy initiatives, such as the Library Freedom Institute, that are very active in the greater community in their advocacy and education around data privacy. In addition, LDH’s conversations with technology workers in other fields have made it clear that professionals in other industries wished that they had strong professional ethics and standards like the library profession.

Nonetheless, others from outside the library profession take this trust too far. For example, in Emma Trotter’s “Patron Data Privacy Protection at Public Libraries: The Ethical Model Big Data Lacks”, Trotter proposes that libraries should become personal data stores (PDS) where people can gather their data in one secure place and then manage the processing of their data by third parties. Trotter is very confident that libraries can become the ethical role model for Big Data with this marriage between PDS and library privacy ethics. Overall, Trotter believes that the ethical issues around Big Data would be negated once libraries become front and center in the overall management of Big Data.

While libraries do have a strong ethical basis around advocacy and adoption of privacy practices, libraries also have their fair share of privacy issues and gaps. Libraries are not immune to the same threats and vulnerabilities as other professions and industries, such as data leaks and breaches, ransomware attacks, phishing, and even underfunding or undertraining staff in ways to protect patron privacy. Librarianship also deals with ethical issues around their collection and processing of patron data, particularly for marketing and user profiling, as well as working with vendors who also collect and process patron data without giving the patron control over what is collected and processed. One doesn’t need to search too far to find an example of such – one being the Santa Cruz Public Library’s Civil Grand Jury Report about the numerous ethics breaches surrounding their use of patron data without full patron notice and consent, among other violations of patron privacy.

Yes, other industries can learn from libraries about how to approach privacy in their daily work, including ethics and advocacy, but libraries also have to be honest about the profession’s struggles around data privacy, both on a practical and ethical level. Part of that is being public with these struggles in the public discourse, be it with patrons or with people from other industries who are looking for a model to base their professional privacy ethics and practices on. Another part is re-evaluating how we, as a library profession, market ourselves as privacy experts and safe-keepers of data to our patrons. Again, libraries set themselves apart from other industries regarding privacy ethics and advocacy, but they cannot set themselves apart from the reality that is working with data in the real world that has real needs that fall into ethical gray areas and real data security and privacy risks.