Librarians in uproar after borrowing record of teenage Haruki Murakami is leaked
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
- people care if other people know what they have read
- people care much less if a machine knows what they have read
I like the idea that Youtube remembers the videos I've watched so that it rec's others, it's a useful feature of the site. The fact that someone else, a person, could see that information, that is upsetting. It's probably difficult to have one without the other, however.
The real comparison is if Google gave that information, de-anonymized, to advertisers. Then there would be an issue.
In almost every current business case it probably isn't worth it to bother.
But if I cry aloud about online / computer tracking, I believe I will get a very mixed response. Some people will stand with my issue, but too many will simply be bored with my issue. I don't think the environmental potential energy for this issue is strong enough.
That people would raise a cry over one issue and not another is not sufficient to diagnose their internal wants. It may also speak to their assessment of (probability) x (magnitude) of success.
When I was a kid/teen, each book in the county library had a card in a pocket glued or taped to the inside front cover of the book. Your library card had a metal plate on it embossed with your library card number. To check out a book you took it to the checkout counter, they took your library card and the card from the book, and used a machine that printed your library card number and the due date on that card from the book [1]. They kept that card, and put a card in the book that told you the due date.
When you returned the book, they would put that original card back in the pocket and return the book the the stacks.
Note that if you could obtain my library card number, then you could find out if I had checked out a particular book by simply finding that book on the shelves and looking at the checkout card to see if my library card number was printed on it. You could even tell when I checked it out because the due date would be listed. The card had enough room to store records from a couple dozen checkouts.
I think that this didn't bother people because it took some work to get the information. First, you need the target's library card number. One way you could get that would be to have someone watch me when I come out of the library and try to get a good enough look to identify a book I've checked out. Then wait until I return the book and it is back on the shelves, and you can get my number from the card.
Once you've got the card number, you now have to start looking in books for it. If you are trying to see if I'm reading books on a particular subject, you might reasonably look at all books on that subject, but if you are trying to get a general picture of all my reading that is going to be a big hassle.
A lot of things were like this--the data was not particularly protected or kept private, but because getting it required going to some particular place and trolling through printed records generally only people who had a really good reason to want it would go to the effort.
[1] Similar to the way credit cards worked back before electronic card readers.
On the other hand, the information was obtained and "leaked" by someone who stumbled upon the library cards while disposing old books and ancillary things from an old library.... It reminds me of the cardfile case in New York[1] somewhere that brought insight into the lives of adolescents/young adults who attended some special preparatory kind of institution for kids but whose history had almost completely been lost...
[1]http://www.slate.com/articles/life/permanent_record/features...
It is the ALA policy that such records should regularly be purged from the system. For example, quoting from http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=interpretations&Temp... :
> It is the responsibility of library staff to destroy information in confidential or privacy protected records in order to protect from unauthorized disclosure. Information that should be regularly purged or shredded includes personally identifiable information on library resource use, material circulation history, and security / surveillance tapes and logs.
You can see some of the effects of this policy at http://ask.metafilter.com/228587/What-are-the-negative-resul... , regarding how some libraries purge their records more frequently, as part of the opposition to section 215 of the Patriot Act:
> The library I worked at would delete the record of what a patron borrowed as soon as the return is processed. ...
> Libraries have long purged patron records
Or from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-07-03/news/030703027... :
> Because of space limits, the Chicago Public Library, one of the largest library systems in the country, long has purged unnecessary circulation records each day and expunges Internet caches every 30 minutes, said spokeswoman Margot Holland. ...
> For years, Skokie's library has purged records on borrowed materials once they're returned. Recently, it installed software to delete records of Internet use. ...
> Sarah Meisels, Wheaton's library director, noted that Wheaton for years has purged circulation records as soon as they are no longer needed, making it practically impossible to comply with the Patriot Act.
> In part because the Patriot Act is so rarely invoked, and also because libraries historically have gone to lengths to preserve patrons' privacy, allowing for the act is almost a moot point, Meisels said.
You say you've "never heard librarians question whether they should be retaining borrower records." How much have you listened to libraries talk about their retention policies to know if they have been saying anything?
Bear in mind also that in the US something like 48 of the states have special privacy laws for library records.
"Shhhhhhhhh"
Seriously, I am married to a librarian. Since it's a service sector job (and often a government one at that), they tend to be in uproar in private.
That they are in public is good policy in this regard; lest they lose patronage as confidence in the confidentiality of their patrons knowledge exploration is diminished.
Examples:
Check Japanese Facebook accounts. 99% of them have no pictures of themselves nor is their profile pic a picture of themselves
Japanese don't use selfie sticks to take pictures to brag. They use them to not have to ask a stranger to take their picture. See paragraph above
In Japanese law it is illegal to take pictures of people in public without their permission. Not enforced for crowds but it is the law
Trade shows booths will often have "no pictures" signs which are respected in Japan and would be ignored I most western countries
Nearly all hotels in Japan have porn but you can pay for it by using a cash based vending machine in the hallway. It gives you a card with a code you type into the tv. It therefore doesn't show up on your credit card or hotel receipt
You have always been able to buy almost anything on the Internet with cash in Japan. You order and choose to pay with one of the many 3rd party payment systems. You're given a code. You go to the nearest convenience store and use a machine there to print out a barcode page (or print it yourself). You hand it to the clerk who scans it and takes your money. The item is now paid for. The merchant knows what you ordered but the payment company has no info on you.
Japan was the only country to get in a tizzy over google street view issues.
I bring all those up just to point out that the Japanese have a vastly different attitude toward privacy
These records are ~50 years old, pre the computerization of library borrowing records.
It's a fair bet record keeping has changed in the intervening decades.
Is it? Just because someone checked out a book doesn't mean they read the book. And just because they read a book doesn't mean they liked it, remembered it, or were influenced by it.
This information has no context. I see no value in them whatsoever.
---
Haiku of the Week:
When I eat deep-fried oysters, I am lonely, But they are delicious.
Only Haruki-san can do this without trying. But not without frying.
Company called Culture Convenience Club, operator of large book/media chain Tsutaya, now operates some public libraries in Japan, which basically runs both a library and a book store in the premise; and patron can optionally associate their store card with library card, so each checkout from libraries would count toward their in-store point, I guess in return for the record they will keep about that checkout. (There have been some questionable book selection/discard policies some take as conflict of interest, but that's another story...)
So I feel, at least partially, they are using this as opportunity to increase public awareness of their position.
p.s. I do not know who actually makes the decision to keep records....is it law in japan?
The system was to keep track of who had borrowed a book, so that they could be tracked down if it was not returned.
I remember it being really fun in grade school, to realize I had checked out the same book as an older friend.
I would be surprised if you are from somewhere more metropolitan than Kobe Japan [0]. It is much more likely that you are just young.
My library card was a 5x5cm card sleeve. If I borrowed something, the return date was stamped in the book, and on the book's removable 5x15cm slip. That slip was put inside my card, and probably ordered by due date in the librarian's index file.
This was early 1990s in Britain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Library_card.jpg
The Browne Issue System appears to be what most small libraries used.
> The cards were apparently leaked to the paper after a volunteer who once taught at the school came across them while he was sorting out old library books that were to be thrown away.
The reason why we don't hear about these kinds of data leakages is because paper usually gets thrown away. Or a building burns down/floods. And also, paper records don't come up in a Google search (which is the extent of "research" for many people today).
Why didn't the school back then have a policy of throwing away cards after x number of years? Probably for the same reason why anything was done before computers became so ubiquitous...we constantly underestimate how the power of computation and networking changes the accessibility of information. Back when I graduated from college (and by this time, Google was a major player), no one really complained about printing people's names (i.e. mostly students) in the police blotter. Now, I believe it is a rarity for a school newspaper that publishes online to also publish full names of the suspects, even though no federal/state laws have been passed that would require such discretion. The reason why this practice is now rare is pretty common-sensical to us today, but not so much when Google was still relatively new.
It takes up a lot of space, and has to be kept dry within a reasonable temperature range. Academic libraries spend tidy sums on climate control to keep their books from rotting away. It also has to be indexed and filed so it's possible to find what you're looking for.
If you do it properly, you end up with something like this:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
So the costs are non-trivial. And most people would consider library loan records trivial information. So there are good economic and practical reasons for throwing them out.
Besides, it's unlikely Plato, Jefferson, or Tesla did most of their reading in libraries. (Karl Marx did, but he was probably an exception.)
Heck, many people keep personal diaries, and most surely would object to people reading them without their permission while they are alive. On the other hand, their diaries are prime sources on given person's life to biographers, which is one reason some people keep them.
I understand literature and history departments at universities love this kind of sources.
You may be thinking of the courtesy extended to the living heirs of dead people.
"Carmichael’s words continue to resonate 40 years later, says Kweli, who was stopped in an airport after 9/11, by “the FBI, the CIA, and the TSA,” because the government knew that he had been listening to Carmichael’s speeches. What these agencies and other authorities who remain fearful of black power miss, says Kweli, is that Carmichael, a “fiery speaker, “was “just a regular dude.” Exhibit A, for Kweli, is the interview with Mabel Carmichael, where the son respects his mother’s strength and dignity."
http://www.popmatters.com/review/148310-the-black-power-mixt...
(Highly recommend the movie, as a wonderful window into the recent past)
Sounds like Haruki Murakami should have installed uBlock Origin and that the library shouldn't have enforced a real names policy :)