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 | Ask.com Takes Privacy Stand, Joins Call for Industrywide Privacy Standards
With privacy an increasingly worrisome issue for consumers in the web world, search engine Ask.com has announced a strong privacy stance, including a program that will offer users anonymous searching. Ask.com officials said the AskEraser program makes it the first major search engine to give consumers the option of preventing "retention of their search history at the time of their search." AskEraser is expected to be deployed on Ask.com in the U.S. and U.K. by the end of the year and globally early next year. Ask.com this week also joined Microsoft in a joint statement calling on the search engine industry to develop privacy standards working with "consumer advocacy organizations and academics." They called on the industry to develop "global privacy principles for data collection, use and protection related to searching and online advertising."
The planned launch of AskEraser would seem to vault Ask.com to the head of the field regarding privacy policies. "This gives the user full power," noted Gary Price, director of Online Information Resources at Ask.com and senior editor of the popular ResourceShelf. "Not just a little power, but full power." For Ask.com users not choosing to use the AskEraser program, data is fully anonymized within the industry standard of 18 months. Price acknowledged that some data retention is necessary for innovation or improved services, something "librarians have always realized." However, he added, giving consumers the choice for complete privacy was the right thing to do. "As a librarian, I'm proud of this," Price told the LJ Academic Newswire. Patrick Crisp, an Ask.com spokesperson, said that a range of factors pushed Ask.com to offer AskEraser, including public awareness of privacy issues and concerns in the European Union and concerns over U.S. policy.
Indeed, public advocacy and watchdog groups have increasingly voiced privacy worries. Weeks ago, Privacy International, (PI) a London-based institute, issued an interim report containing its first-ever privacy rankings for the world's most popular Internet service providers. PI rated 23 sites Notably, no firm earned PI's highest rating, and only Google earned the lowest rating, characterized as "hostile to privacy." (Ask.com was not included.)
Privacy is also drawing more concern from the public at large, owing in part to more coverage in major national publications such as Privacy Lost author David H. Holtzman's recent article in Business Week. "Large companies are an ever-increasing threat to individual privacy because many of them are in the business of selling information, and our personal data is a valuable commodity," Holtzman argued in the article. He added that Apple, Google, and AT&T are "Nanny" corporations that believe "they have the right, if not the obligation, to snoop through your e-mail, show everyone what your house looks like from the street, and catch you if you infringe a music company's copyright."
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Special Collections Library on Tap for University of Georgia
If all goes according to plan, the University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, could be breaking ground on a new state-of-the-art Special Collections Library by 2009. UGA officials say they are raising their portion of the necessary funding and if the Georgia General Assembly approves an estimated $27–30 million in state funding, the building could be designed and ready for construction in short order. UGA librarian Bill Potter told the LJ Academic Newswire that the building, which has been in the pipeline for some time, would house three special current collections libraries and is now the top university project for new state funding.
Currently, the UGA's special collections reside in three areas, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, and the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, which the library web site describes as "overflowing with rare and irreplaceable treasures." The proposed new building, some 150,000 square feet in volume, would feature "a large, central shared atrium that will be used for special exhibits and public receptions." The three individual special collection libraries will each face the atrium with separate interior entrances to maintain "a unique identity to each library." Plans also call for 250-seat auditorium and storage adequate "for a minimum of 50 years' growth," as well as classroom space for lectures, reading rooms and reference areas.
The state is expected to cover two-thirds of the cost. The university and libraries would raise the remainder, for a total of $40–$45 million. "My most optimistic expectation is that we would break ground in 18 to 24 months," Potter noted.
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| House Passes Bill Supporting NIH Access Policy
Public access advocates this week praised the U.S. House of Representatives after it quickly passed the FY 2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill, which includes a directive for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide free public online access to agency-funded research findings within 12 months of publication. Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), said the House vote brought the long sought-after policy a step closer to reality.
The current NIH Public Access Policy, implemented in 2005 as a voluntary measure, has been a failure, resulting in the deposit of less than 5 percent of eligible research by individual investigators. A similar measure has been approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee and will be considered by the full Senate later this summer. If passed, and signed by the president, the policy, barring any legal challenges or last minute tweaks, would go into effect next year. However, publishers have laid the groundwork for a copyright challenge.
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| Is SMU's Bush Library Plan Headed Back to Court?
If you're still waiting for the long-anticipated announcement that the George W. Bush Library and Policy Institute will go to Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas, you'll have to wait a bit longer. This week, a Dallas County District Court ruled that Gary Vodicka, who is suing SMU charging that he was evicted to make way for the Bush Library, could ask Baylor University officials about "a dozen written questions" about its presidential library bid. According to the Dallas Morning News, chief among Vodicka's questions for Baylor: does the university they really believe it's still in the running for the library? If it's not, that could complicate SMU's defense that its plan for the library—which Vodicka wanted disclosed—is a trade secret.
According to reports, Baylor has refused to concede it is out of the running, saying it has yet to be notified. With SMU named as the exclusive finalist, however, Vodicka says the plan could be released although it is unclear exactly what Vodicka hopes it would show. In what some observers expected would pave the way for the library at SMU, a federal judge has already ruled that the university has legal title to the University Gardens condominium complex, in which Vodicka owned four units. But while the title issue was settled, other issues in the case, including Vodicka's charges of fraud, remained to be decided.
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