Do PLs Overvalue Privacy Issues?

OCLC has released an international research study, Sharing, Privacy, and Trust in Our Networked World, which has some sobering news for libraries. Though 60 percent of respondents say they trust the library, only a small fraction of people consider library web sites more private than other web sites, such as search engines, social networking sites, and online bookstores.

Additionally, 382 U.S. library directors were surveyed; the report notes that they “have an inflated view of the information privacy attitudes among the U.S. general public, particularly related to privacy of library information,” overestimating how much others believed library usage was private.

Observed Karen Schneider on her Free Range Librarian blog, “[T]he report stops just short of pointing out what a lot of us muse over privately and publicly...that traditional values about user privacy hold us back from a level of personalized service people increasingly expect.”

More than one-quarter of respondents participate in social networking sites, OCLC said, while half of college students do—a sign of even more growth in creating content. OCLC, with the help of Harris Interactive, surveyed more than 6100 people, ages 14–84, in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the United States.

U.S. library directors, generally middle-aged and older, are “substantially” less likely to use social networking sites than the general public. Only 14 percent of directors think social networking is a role for the library. Both members of the general public and the directors agreed that hosting book clubs was the main social networking service libraries should consider. Other potential roles cited by smaller numbers of the general public include homework help, support groups, sharing interests, and education services.