Librarians’ Attitudes Regarding Information and Internet Privacy Author(s): Michael Zimmer Source: The Library Quarterly, Vol. 84, No. 2 (April 2014), pp. 123-151 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/675329 . Accessed: 29/09/2014 11:59 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Library Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.65.109.20 on Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:59:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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Librarians’ Attitudes Regarding Information and Internet PrivacyAuthor(s): Michael ZimmerSource: The Library Quarterly, Vol. 84, No. 2 (April 2014), pp. 123-151Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/675329 .
Accessed: 29/09/2014 11:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheLibrary Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
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This article reports findings from a new survey measuring librarians’ views on privacy rights and
protecting library users’ privacy. The study, which builds on a 2008 American Library Associa-
tion survey assessing librarians’ attitudes about privacy, provides important data that will help
privacy advocates evaluate the state of privacy in the United States and libraries’ role in protect-
ing library users’ privacy. Overall, the results indicate a high level of concern among respondents
over information privacy and a desire to control access and use of personal information, but they
also reflect some shifts in privacy attitudes compared to the 2008 study. Implications are dis-
cussed for future advocacy and outreach by the American Library Association and related ad-
vocacy and educational groups.
T raditionally, the context of the library brings with it specific norms of information
flow regarding patron activity, including a professional commitment to patron pri-
vacy ðFoerstel 1991; Gorman 2000; American Library Association 2006a; Morgan
2006Þ. In the library setting, a patron’s intellectual activities are protected by decades of
established norms and practices intended to preserve patron privacy and confidentiality,
most stemming from the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights and related
interpretations ðAmerican Library Association 2002, 2006bÞ. As a matter of professional ethics,
most libraries protect patron privacy by engaging in limited tracking of user activities, insti-
tuting short-term data retention policies, and generally enabling the anonymous browsing of
materials. These are the existing privacy norms within the library context, and they are the
cornerstone of what makes up the “librarian ethics.”
However, these norms are being increasingly challenged from numerous fronts. For ex-
ample, law enforcement and government agencies have historically pressured libraries to
turn over data on patron activities ðMcFadden 1987; Kennedy 1989; Foerstel 1991; Doyle 2003;
Foerstel 2004Þ, and provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act have sparked new concerns about law
This research was made possible by a generous grant from the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual
Freedom and the Open Society Foundations, with special thanks to Barbara Jones and Deborah Caldwell-Stone for theirsupport of this project. Research assistance was provided by Adriana McCleer and Jeremy Mauger, and I would especiallylike to thank Mark Schroeder for his valuable assistance.
tellectual freedom and privacy prompted the ALA to reaffirm its commitment to protect-
ing these values, culminating in new policy statements on “Confidentiality of Personally Iden-
tifiable Information about Library Users” ðAmerican Library Association 2012aÞ and “Privacy:
An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights” ðAmerican Library Association 2002Þ.Along with the ALA’s formal responses to new threats, individual librarians and librar-
ies often take their own actions to protect patron privacy and confidentiality, including de-
stroying records of what patrons had borrowed, scrapping plans to use new computer tech-
nology to profile the reading habits of patrons and inform them when works they enjoy are
published, destroying Internet access logs on a daily basis, posting warning signs, and offering
patron education on privacy issues ðMurphy 2003; Sanchez 2003Þ.To summarize, librarians have a rich history of protecting patron privacy, and they have
fought to ensure that the democratic ideal of intellectual freedom survives such challenges
to the privacy and confidentiality of patrons’ information-seeking activities. Protecting these
freedoms is necessary to ensure free and unfettered access to information, the cornerstone
of the ALA’s Code of Ethics and the “librarian ethics” it promotes.
Related Work
During the past few decades, the issue of information privacy has drawn considerable at-
tention among researchers from a range of disciplines, including law, policy, consumer behav-
ior, economics, and sociology, with much of the focus on measuring privacy attitudes and
preferences among the public. Between 1978 and 2004, Alan Westin conducted over thirty
privacy-related surveys, covering general privacy, consumer privacy, medical privacy, and
other privacy-related areas, culminating in his creation of numerous privacy indexes.4 With
the emergence of the Internet as a dominant tool for communication, information-seeking,
and commerce, increased attention was placed on the privacy attitudes of online users. One
of the first attempts to understand the nature of online privacy concerns was a 1999 study by
Lorrie Cranor and her colleagues at AT&T Labs ðCranor, Reagle, and Ackerman 1999Þ, whichreported a high level of concern about privacy in general and particularly on the Internet.
Numerous important empirical studies on privacy attitudes and opinions of Internet users
have followed, ranging from studies that attempt to update Cranor et al.’s original investiga-
tions and frameworks ðMalhotra, Kim, and Agarwal 2004; Tsai et al. 2006; Buchanan et al.
4. For a summary of Westin’s work, see Kumaraguru and Cranor ð2005Þ.3. See, broadly, American Library Association ð2012bÞ.
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2007Þ, studies exploring economic and psychological aspects of information sharing in social
Librarians’ Attitudes Regarding Privacy • 127
networking environments ðGross and Acquisti 2005; Acquisiti and Gross 2006Þ, and inves-
tigations of any generational differences in privacy attitudes and behaviors online ðHoof-nagle et al. 2010Þ, just to identify a few.
Despite the importance placed on patron privacy within the “librarian ethics,” there has
been little study of the privacy attitudes and practices of librarians and information profes-
sionals themselves. Related empirical research has ranged from surveys on how library re-
sponses to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks implicate patron privacy ðEstabrook 2002Þto the tracking of laws and court cases related to protecting the confidentiality of library
records ðKennedy 1989; Carson 2001Þ. Other than the ALA’s 2008 survey, no significant re-
search surveying privacy-related opinions and attitudes of librarians and information profes-
sionals has been published.
Method
Participants
The target population of this study was defined as librarians and related information pro-
fessionals currently practicing within the United States, including those in public, academic,
school, and special libraries. A nonprobability self-selective sampling method was used to
recruit participants: notice of the survey was posted on web and social media platforms by
the author and the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom; promoted by the ALA through an
online press release; published in American Libraries, the ALA’s flagship magazine, with circu-
lation of 65,000; and communicated on various e-mail lists for librarians and related infor-
mation professionals. State library associations were also asked to promote the survey to
their membership through e-mail, social media, or related communication channels.
This purposive sampling method generated 1,866 unique survey submissions, with 1,214
surveys completed to the end. Respondents were not required to answer all of the questions.
Half the respondents worked in public libraries, with 36 percent in academic library settings.
Over 50 percent had the title “librarian,” while one-fourth were “library administrators.” The
vast majority of respondents were between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-four. One-third
of the respondents were from the Northeast of the United States. The overall demographic
breakdowns of respondents are available in table 1 ðlibrary typeÞ, table 2 ðjob title/descriptionÞ,table 3 ðageÞ, table 4 ðeducationÞ, and table 5 ðgeographic regionÞ.
Materials
The study comprised a descriptive survey with forty-four questions divided into four parts.
Part 1, titled “General Privacy Attitudes 1,” generally mirrored the questions asked in the 2008
ALA study, measuring privacy attitudes of respondents related to concerns over commercial
and governmental privacy threats, online privacy, and the role of libraries. Respondents
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only 70 percent are similarly concerned about government data collection practices. Over 95 per-
Librarians’ Attitudes Regarding Privacy • 131
cent of respondents feel that government agencies and businesses should not share personal
information with third parties without authorization and that when personal information is
provided to a company for a specific purpose, it should not be used for anything other than
that stated purpose. And over 80 percent feel that Congress should do more to protect per-
sonal information from unauthorized disclosure.
Regarding library-specific issues, 97 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that
libraries should never share personal information and circulation or Internet records with-
out authorization or a court order. Over three-quarters of respondents feel that libraries are
doing all they can do to prevent unauthorized access to patrons’ personal information and
circulation records, and over three-quarters of respondents feel that libraries should play a
role in educating the general public about issues of personal privacy and risks resulting from
using the Internet.
Comparison to 2008
The first part of the 2012 study repeated the questions from the 2008 survey, providing a
rudimentary comparison of attitudes between the two time periods.5 Overall, attitudes and
responses in 2012 aligned with those from 2008, with some notable differences. In both sur-
veys, the vast majority ð95 percent in 2008, 90 percent in 2012Þ of respondents expressed
concern that “companies are collecting too much personal information about me and other
individuals.” However those who “strongly agree” dropped from 70 percent in 2008 to only
54 percent in 2012, indicating a possible dampening in the level of concern over time. Simi-
larly, the number of those who “strongly agree” with the statement expressing concern “that
the government is collecting too much personal information about me and other individ-
uals” dropped from 61 percent to 33 percent, with 22 percent of respondents opting for the
“neither agree nor disagree” option.
When considering the statement “Libraries should play a role in educating the general
public about issues of personal privacy,” 92 percent of respondents in 2008 either agreed or
strongly agreed, while only 77 percent in 2012 held the same view. Of the 2012 respondents,
18 percent took a neutral “neither agree nor disagree” position. Similarly, the percentage of re-
spondents who agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “Congress should adopt more
laws that protect personal information from unauthorized disclosure” dropped from 96 per-
cent in 2008 to 82 percent in 2012, with 15 percent taking a neutral position.
In 2012, 37 percent of respondents were neutral to the statement “I’m concerned that
search engines are sharing my personal information and search records with the government.”
5. The 2008 survey only had a four-item response scale: “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “agree,” and “strongly agree.”
The 2012 survey, by comparison, included a fifth neutral option, “neither agree nor disagree,” allowing for greaterrefinement of opinions expressed in the later survey.
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Have any aspects of your library’s resources or services been restrictedor removed from public review and/or circulation in reaction to
antiterrorism or other law enforcement related measures?
Response BooksPrint Magazines and
NewspapersOnline
DatabasesGovernmentDocuments
InternetAccess
Yes 16 10 9 28 59
No 984 984 969 933 923
Don’t know 219 223 241 255 235
Prefer not to
respond 6 7 6 6 7
able 12. “Library Practices” Overall Results ðQuestion 25Þ
hinking of the past 5 years, please identifye number of instances in which law enforcementr a government agency served the library withn official legal order for library records,aterials, or other content. Number of Responses %
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Michael Zimmer: assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee and director of the Center for Information Policy Research. With a back-
ground in new media and Internet studies, the philosophy of technology, and information policy
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