Student’s ILL Claim Crumbles

An unnamed student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth said in late December that he was visited by federal agents after requesting the “Peking” edition of Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book through interlibrary loan (ILL). His claim, however, collapsed within a week. According to a December 17, 2005 report in the New Bedford, MA, Standard-Times, the student told his professors that he was visited at his parents’ home by two Department of Homeland Security agents after he requested the book as part of his coursework. Later, he was approached by agents who told him the book was on a “watch list,” he said, although it was not revealed how his library records may have been obtained. University officials said only that they were investigating,

In a December 24 Standard-Times follow-up, the student, under questioning by university officials and the reporter, offered new details regarding confidentiality agreements that he and his parents signed—details relayed to the student’s parents, who said that was news to them. Librarians, on various blogs and electronic discussion lists, mostly took a sober and skeptical tack. “Apart from the [poor] reporting, there was the idea a library would cooperate,” noted librarian Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, “that they’d ask patrons for Social Security numbers on their ILL requests.”