This is a very important issue. Just the other day, I heard a news story
about two campaign offices that closed after our recent primary election.
They left significant quantities of highly sensitive personal data behind,
set out to be taken to a dumpster, but not shredded. Everyone should be
much more vigilant about giving out and handling personal information than
we are. It is very good that librarians have traditionally taken a very
strict view of patron confidentiality. We must continue to do so, and look
for ways to do it even better.
That said, it seems that there are many legitimate uses for circulation
information. Say in a weeding project a book turns up that circulated 16
times in the last ten years. Looks like a keeper. But what if we can tell
that one user checked it out 16 times over a period of four years, most
recently five years ago. Now it looks like perhaps one student found it
useful for a couple of undergraduate term papers and some kind of
post-graduate research, but is long gone from campus. The collection
management implications may look a little different now.
Is it possible to delete all information that would reveal the identity of
borrowers and still retain statistics not only on how many times an item
circulates, but also how many different borrowers used it and what years
(or semesters, etc.) it circulated?
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
David Guion
Music Cataloger
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Jackson Library
320 College Ave.
Greensboro, NC 27412
(336) 334-5781
dmguion_at_uncg.edu
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Received on Wed May 21 2008 - 11:54:43 EDT