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Contents
Week 4: Vendors
- Real time lecture: June 10th 9:30 - 11:30 Pacific/12:30 - 2:30 Eastern on Zoom https://zoom.us/j/9129428892
Overview
While librarians have always considered privacy among our most sacred core values, our in-library practices leave a lot to be desired. Recent privacy issues with vendors like Kanopy, Lynda.com, and Gale Analytics have brought to light the abysmal privacy practices of library vendors. And while it's easy to criticize these outside parties, our internal privacy policies could also use a lot of work.
Readings
- Addressing the alarming systems of surveillance built by library vendors: https://sparcopen.org/news/2021/addressing-the-alarming-systems-of-surveillance-built-by-library-vendors/
- Vendor privacy scorecard: https://github.com/alisonLFP/libraryfreedominstitute/blob/master/LFI2/finalprojects/Library%20Freedom-%20Vendor%20Scorecard-%20110719.pdf
- NISO consensus principles: https://groups.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/16064/NISO%20Privacy%20Principles.pdf
- ALA library privacy guidelines for vendors: https://notechforice.com/lawletter/
- Inequality in Knowledge Production: The Integration of Academic Infrastructure by Big Publishers https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816707/document
- EFF’s How to Assess Vendors’ Data Security: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/how-assess-vendors-data-security
- Gale Analytics/California Grand Jury story: https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=california-grand-jury-data-analytics-threaten-patron-privacy
- Librarianship at the crossroads of ICE surveillance: http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2019/ice-surveillance/
- Activists are suing Thomson Reuters over its sale of personal data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/18/technology-202-activists-are-suing-thomson-reuters-over-its-sale-personal-data/
- No Tech for ICE campaign: https://notechforice.com/lawletter/
- LexisNexis to provide giant database of personal info to ICE: https://theintercept.com/2021/04/02/ice-database-surveillance-lexisnexis/
- Ethical financial stewardship: one library's examination of vendor business practices (co-authored by Lorelle Gianelli, who is in this course!!!!): http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2021/ethical-financial-stewardship/
Some vendor privacy policies
Scan through a couple of these and take note of anything you think is alarming or interesting, anything worth discussing with the group. You can also feel free to look up another library vendor of your choosing:
- Kanopy www.kanopystreaming.com/privacy
- Cengage (Gale) https://www.cengage.com/privacy/
- Wix https://www.wix.com/about/privacy
- ProQuest https://about.proquest.com/en/about/privacy-policy/
- RELX https://www.relx.com/site-services/privacy
- Thomson Reuters https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/privacy-statement.html and https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/trust-center/data-privacy-information.html
Discussion
TBD
Tasks
- Lecture, readings, discussion forum
- Schedule final project checkin with Alison
