Choose Privacy Week is an initiative from the American Library Association that invites library users into a national conversation about privacy rights in a digital age.
According to the American Library Association, "The right to privacy – the right to read, consider, and develop ideas and beliefs free from observation or unwanted surveillance by the government or others – is the bedrock foundation for intellectual freedom." Library users must be able to select and access information and ideas without fear of "embarrassment, judgment, punishment, or ostracism". A lack of privacy could lead to a significant "chilling effect on library users’ willingness to exercise their First Amendment right to read, thereby impairing free access to ideas."
-American Library Association. (2021, October). "Privacy." https://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacy
According to California State Law (Government code section 6267) a library is obliged to assure confidentiality of records relating to registration and circulation. Although we often refer to this as “patron privacy”, the scope is limited to records kept by the library and not to larger issues of personal privacy. Registration records are the patron library card records. Circulation records are the lists of library materials checked out on a patron’s library card. Confidentiality is about data. Confidentiality relates to the possession of personally identifiable information, including such library-created records as circulation records, computer sign-up sheets, meeting room registrations, web sites visited, or reserve notices.
