Quick Thought

Since I've been taking this class, I've been giving more consideration to the policies that are in place where I work. My library system decided that we are going to convert to self pick-up of holds, because patrons like to be self-sufficient and it will free up staff time to do other (as yet unspecified) tasks.

Everyone is abuzz at this news, because self pick-up of holds has implications for patron privacy - how do we prevent patrons from browsing the holds shelves, looking at the private materials their neighbors have ordered? There hasn't really been any dialogue about this, or how privacy is going to be protected.

It's going to be a hard transition, I think, if we assign patrons a code or other way to identify their own holds. I envision a lot of confusion. But using patron names and attaching those names to publicly viewable materials would be a mistake - what if Patron A sees that Patron B, who she knows, has books waiting on homosexuality, or witchcraft, or divorce?

I looked for a little information about this online and found this advice from the ALA's privacy toolkit:

Avoid library practices and procedures that place information on public view
(e.g., using postcards for overdue notices or requested materials; using patron
names to identify self-pickup holds; placing staff terminals so the screens
can be read by the public; using sign-in sheets to use computers or other
devices; and providing titles of reserve requests or interlibrary loans over the
telephone to users' family members or answering machines).

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