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A library is probably one of the last places where one can pursue interests and information unobserved. A mere few years ago this was a sign of obsolescence rather than currency.
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In 2009 Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, was asked whether users should be willing to share information with Google as if it were a trusted friend --and Schmidt famously replied, "If you have something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."  The Electronic Frontier Foundation noted that this is very close to the famous phrase, "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about" --beloved of those who are seeking greater law-enforcement powers or processes.  It implies that people who seek to preserve privacy are doing something to worry about, not those who place them under surveillance.

That was then.  In the aftermath of Edward Snowdon's revelations --in particular those that detail the very cozy relationships between the NSA, major firms such as Google, and telecommunications giants such as Verizon-- privacy has returned as a positive right, not merely a historical left-over.

A library is probably one of the last places where one can pursue interests and information unobserved.  A mere few years ago this was a sign of obsolescence rather than currency.  Libraries made data surveillance difficult because they weren't high-tech enough.  That has changed too.  Suddenly that obsolescence has become a feature (as in, "that's not a bug, it's a feature!").

Why does it matter?  If there is one thing that Pew survey after Pew survey has found --as well as OCLC and other survey producers-- that thing surely has to be: people feel positive about the library "brand."  They want a vibrant, useful library in their academic, residential, or business community whether or not they intend to use it (or have used it).  A library is a "good thing."  People trust libraries, and trust librarians.

Trust is a huge asset, not to be thrown away or discounted casually.  Just ask General Motors, or for that matter, the NSA itself.

In general, libraries do a fairly accurate job of maintaining trust, but could do a lot better.  Circulation records of tangible items are not easily available for public discovery, depending on the laws of state and local jurisdictions.  (Connecticut has alarming little provision of the privacy of library records, for example.)  In any case, circulation records are hard to locate digitally because they are held in highly particular formats in integrated library systems, formats that don't translate readily to standards and common practices outside.  That's wasn't a bug, and now it's a feature.

Library use of external databases is a different matter.  In many systems, all traffic routed through a library proxy will be seen by parties outside the proxy as coming from one machine, one Internet Protocol address.  Separating the sessions would be far harder.  That doesn't cover all library database transactions, however, or even a large portion of them.  Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon --in French, GAFA-- can monitor a great deal of transactions on library workstations unless those are properly protected.

Eric Hellman has written persuasively (to my mind, at least) about the Library Digital Privacy Pledge here and here.  It's an interesting concept, whether or not the pledge ever receives wide adoption.  Eric's primary focus at this point is to get libraries to use the secure HTTP protocol --HTTPS-- as much as possible.  Library digital privacy has, of course, many other aspects that will need to be addressed.

Recently the small New Hampshire public library in West Lebanon (near Dartmouth College) was for the most part bullied away from using the secure browser system TOR by the NSA --although now they have recovered their courage.  TOR has been targeted in the past as the province of drug-dealers, pedophiles, and terrorists --what lovely company-- and who would want to be associated with them?  The topic invariably circles back to law enforcement: if you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to hide (even when grammatically challenged!).

In the library no one ever used to track your reading, and no one should now: 3rd article of the American Library Association's Code of Ethics.  Trust is easily lost.  Privacy is easily lost.  A library is a great place to think, write, and read privately.  It's not a bug, it's a feature.

 

Google's primary responsibility is to make money for its shareholders. Libraries exist to get books to readers.
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Robert Darnton, Director of the Harvard University Library, writes in The New York Review of Books:

Like all commercial enterprises, Google's primary responsibility is to make money for its shareholders.  Libraries exist to get books to readers --books and other forms of knowledge and entertainment, provided for free.

Darnton's laser prose cuts to the heart of the mission of an academic library: to connect resources to users, period.  No shareholders, no restrictions based on an individual's ability to pay, no corporate interests to satisfy.  The academic library may be the last great commercial-free information commons, and it is endangered because it is often so misunderstood.

Academic libraries have, of course, service plans, budgets, stakeholders, access policies --and sit amidst institutions which charge tuition, often a lot of money.  But after the price of tuition, after admission to the University, after matriculation and registration --the whole of the library information commons is available to every user, individually for free.  Hardly free for the institution.

Darnton's three jeremiads survey the vicious cycle of esclation in the prices of materials followed by decline in library acquisition of those same materials; the unsustainability of commercial journal prices (written and edited by university researchers for the most part!); and the challenges of Google Books, the Google settlement with copyright holders (still not resolved), and the Digital Public Library of America.  The information commons --that bounded financial and institutional space which balances the interests of writers, readers, publishers, colleges and universities, and data bundlers (such as Ebsco)-- is up for renegotiation.  Every major avenue of library acquisitions (monographs, journals, databases, consortia) is undergoing transformation as I write, even for a modest academic library such as Sacred Heart University's.

Fr. Victor Austin of St. Thomas Church (Episcopal) in New York City once told a story --a man stopped him towards the rear of the church after a evening service led by the church's renowed Choir of Men and Boys.  "Is it free?" the man asked Fr. Austin.  Confused at first, Austin replied that you don't need a ticket to attend the service.  "But is it really free?" the man persisted --perhaps used to religious communities where one needs to be a paying member to attend high holy services.  St. Thomas' Church  --with a professional choir, much less the Zeffirellian church itself, the ornate style of worship, the public location on Fifth Avenue-- is a spectacularly expensive operation to maintain, possible only through generous gifts both past (read: endowment) and present.  "Is it really free?"  Fr. Austin responded, "No, it is infinitely expensive to provide this service.  But for you, it is free."

That is exactly the position of an academic library, a non-commercial, non-shareholder-driven information common space.  It is very, very expensive to maintain this service, this space.  Librarians can shower you with statistics.  University librarians read more spread-sheets than books on some days.  University administrators and trustees have every right to insist on a lively return on their investment, but measured in cultural, academic, intellectual terms --not expressed as net profit.  It is hugely expensive to run a library.  Academic libraries were once famously called "the bottomless pit, the library as viewed from the administration building" because of their insatiable budgetary demands (Munn, 1968).

But for the library user, it's free.  It must be.  Creative human life, the life of the mind is free.  It is not a return to the shareholders.

Libraries do not have user aggregations: we serve students, faculty, and staff. We are necessarily and properly non-commercial in a culture where commerce rules all, and in that sense we unavoidably counter-cultural.
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Are learning environments in higher education becoming commodified?  Who is in charge here?

The article The Open Ed Tech: never mind the edupunks; or, the great Web 2.0 swindle by Brian Lam and Jim Groom (Educause Review July August 2010) remembers the palmy days of "edupunks" --those Gen-Xers who wanted open educational environments fostered by open web technology.  Away with closed, tightly-controlled proprietary systems!

What happened?  The consolidation of Blackboard.  The rise of Google whatever: docs, alerts, talk, reader, YouTube, whatever.  Above all, the consolidation of cultural industries: ContentID.  Users such as Critical Commons and Lawrence Lessig --who used snippets of copyrighted works for their presentations to demonstrate examples of Fair Use-- were effectively silenced by corporate take-down orders without respect to any Fair Use guidelines.

Advertising is the point of the Google products, its YouTube, Facebook, and all their kin.  Steve Greenberg has written, "You are not Facebook's customer.  You are the product they sell to their real customers --advertisers.  Forget that at your peril."  This is the simple commercial point all the "free" capabilities.  When Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc. control educational and cultural spaces, advertising is the point.  Facebook's long-standing and fundamentally deceptive bait-and-switch privacy policies are a running case in point.  GoogleAnalytics tracks searches, retrievals, and every click.  Is this desirable in a cultural space such as an academic library?

The implications for privacy, for academic freedom, and for creative re-use of cultural "properties" (rather than "resources") are very serious.  Lam and Groom note, ". . . We can expect the values associated with educators and the public interest to be of secondary importance at best.  Proprietary needs will prevail, even if we can trust that these companies set ouf to 'do no evil.'"

(As a reader of Reinhold Niebuhr, I have to add "Don't be evil" as a corporate slogan is reflects a very shallow, California-lite superficiality that either intentionally hypocritical or incredibly stupid.  Of course corporate entities sometimes do evil: see Moral Man and Immoral Society or The Nature and Destiny of Man.  Evil is unavoidable; the question is how to plan for it and limit its effects.  Google's slogan reflects exactly who they are: technologically incredibly sophisticated but philosophical and moral dwarves.)

This is not simply an anti-corporate screed.  Obviously corporations exist to make money, and will do what is necessary.  Obviously, libraries buy or lease many corporate products. But why should libraries advertise corporate products to their users?  Already Wolters-Kluwer's OvidSP defaults to search all journals@Ovid --and offers pay-per-view to those articles not covered by a library's database contract.  Is this advertising or for the convenience of the user?

The question here is whether libraries see our users as aggregatations of data useful for advertisers.  Libraries do not have user aggregations: we serve students, faculty, and staff.  We are necessarily and properly non-commercial in a culture where commerce rules all, and in that sense we unavoidably counter-cultural.  In Lam and Groom's phrase, we provide a green space for public-minded, convivial exchange online and on-ground.  We serve people first,and corporate interests second.  (--no wonder libraries are both incredibly expensive and often poorly funded!)