> 3) Ask ourselves, "To what degree is it the librarian's job to
> protect people's privacy versus educating people about privacy?" In
> some way our professional ethics are in impediment to creating
> services our users increasingly expect.
This question is worth asking. I'm scratching my head as to why we
believe people should have much greater privacy expectations when
using a library than when using a credit card, email, ecommerce site,
or just about any other service. As a group, we librarians seem to
think our data and technology-based services require enough privacy to
satisfy any black helicopter conspiracy theorist.
Things have not always been this way. I don't remember everyone
whining when people filled their names on paper library cards (in
fact, it was common to look at who checked materials out). Had we
always been as paranoid as we are now, we'd be randomly shelving books
and journals in brown paper wrappers so people couldn't tell what
others were reading and we'd conduct reference interviews in booths
where voices would be distorted and faces would be masked to preserve
anonymity.
To satisfy an information need, you need to know a little about the
context of the need. If you know a little about who is asking a
question and why, you're much more likely to give a useful answer. Our
obsession with making sure we have as little context as possible to
work with is why everyone wonders why our services aren't keeping pace
with the growing number of alternatives our users have.
We need to be concerned about appropriate use of data, but over the
past few years we've gone over the deep end.
Received on Fri Jan 25 2008 - 15:48:55 EST