Libraries have always respected reader privacy as essential to one's freedom to read. If someone is looking over your shoulder, you might not pick up that book on gay stories, witchcraft, communism or whatever the taboo topic du jour happens to be. Libraries require either patron consent or actual legal process before disclosing patron records.
Fast forward to reading books online via Google Book Search. Fabulous new life for old books, but where in the complex proposed settlement agreement between Google and the publishers are reader privacy guarantees? I'll save you the pain of looking. Nowhere.
Every time you go online, you leave digital tracks, and with the settlement, you will generally need to authenticate yourself before viewing the out-of-print but in-copyright books at issue.
The final contours are not yet set. The settlement is not yet in effect. It's time now to take action to make sure we build some privacy safeguards in. The ACLU of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Berkeley's Samuelson Clinic have joined in a letter to Google, requesting:
1- Protection against disclosure
2- Limited tracking
3- User control
4- User transparency
Our library users will be reading google books inside the library as well as at home/work. If a reader borrows a book from the library, we protect her privacy. If she reads the same book on our computer terminals, she needs the same protection.
Mary, speaking of libraries and reader privacy, here's an interesting aside, in my opinion. Apparently, the new cars.gov web site says at one point that a user's computer, and I suppose a library computer as well if used to access the site, is now fully accessible by both federal and foreign authorities. What do you think about that?
Posted by: Dan Kleinman | August 03, 2009 at 08:15 PM
Mary, Google has addressed many of your concerns about privacy. I'd like to think that it was in response to your post, but since it was the same day, it must have been something they had been working on before.
Google's response suggests that it should be possible for patrons to protect their privacy whether they are using an institutional subscription or a public terminal in the library. What is unclear is what, if any, user data Google will collect if users opt to log in to their Google account prior to using Book Search (perhaps to take advantage of special features that must be user-specific).
Posted by: Peter Hirtle | July 24, 2009 at 08:25 AM
I believe in freedom of access to information. In fact, I believe it is essential for a functioning democracy. Freedom of access requires privacy. That is, if you think the government is looking over your shoulder at what you read, then the chilling effect kicks in.
What I ask for is that Google not track readers. We can't control what's on the Internet, but we can ask that every book we read online is not logged and tied back to us.
Posted by: Mary M | July 23, 2009 at 09:12 PM
"If a reader borrows a book from the library, we protect her privacy. If she reads the same book on our computer terminals, she needs the same protection."
Mary, some libraries go out of their way to say the Internet is totally out of their hands--people are on their own. Some even put up signs warning of the potential for governmental oversight.
Now libraries are supposed to say that the Internet that is totally out of their hands must be controlled? By a third party, Google, no less? At the request of the ACLU and the EFF? Why not just use more signs?
Please explain how this is not a double standard. Libraries cannot both disclaim control over the Internet while at the same time demand control over the Internet.
"If a reader borrows a book from the library, we protect her privacy. If she reads the same book on our computer terminals, she needs the same protection." For librarians who claim they cannot control the Internet to become librarians who demand "the same protection" from some third party that should control the Internet, I find that quite extraordinary.
One has to wonder who made librarians (and I'm only talking about the limited few making such demands) lords over the Internet.
Posted by: Dan Kleinman | July 23, 2009 at 08:59 PM