Self-check at libraries
Back in May, I wrote several blog entries about libraries and privacy. In one of those entries, I mentioned my conversation with Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the American Library Association, who had mentioned her concern her a growing trend to use self-check in libraries. With self-check, patrons can come pick up books they reserve without having to wait on line or for librarian assistance. The problem with self-check is that libraries put the reserved books out where they are available to everyone and with the patron’s name on the tag, allowing anyone and everyone to see what you have reserved.
An article in the Washington Post this past week discusses this issue and describes one patron’s attempts to address the privacy concerns.
Jaffa decided to press his case. He called the branch manager and talked with the director of Arlington County’s public libraries. The Shirlington library went from putting a Post-it note with the person’s name on the spine of a book to covering the book with a sheet of paper that had the person’s name. Jaffa persisted. So library officials began putting the books in manila envelopes. Jaffa is still unhappy.
“Why don’t they use the library [card] number? Or, like American Airlines, use the first three letters of the first name and the first three of the last name?” he said. “Just eliminate the full name.”
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He went last week to the airy, 15,000-square-foot glass-and-steel library to prove his point. He easily picked books at random from the shelves, opened the envelopes and peeked in, finding that his neighbors wanted to read books on raising emotionally intelligent children, had asked for “Jews and Power” and had ordered DVDs of the TV show “The West Wing.”
“I could stand there all day and look at what everyone’s reading, and no one would stop me,” Jaffa said. And indeed, no one did. No one appeared to even notice.
“What if I see that a neighbor has books on how to build a bomb? Is he a terrorist? Do I tell somebody?” Jaffa said. “What if I see someone I know is checking out books on getting a divorce. Suppose I start talking to friends asking if there’s something going on? Or if someone’s getting books on cancer, and I see her and say, ‘Hey Mary, do you have cancer? I saw you checked out three books on it?’ ”
Jaffa said the only thing that has surprised him is that no one else seems as bothered that their privacy could be so easily invaded.
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It doesn’t surprise me, but it does bother me.
Self-check is great–borrowers can check out their own books at a machine–but it doesn’t REQUIRE the library to put the stuff out on a public shelf to be picked up. Books and videos on hold could be kept in a secure area behind a desk, handed to the borrower, and the borrower could take it along with all their other stuff, go to a machine and self-check everything out there. In fact, for items you find on the shelves, as in the supermarket, it’s MORE private because you can take your books to a machine and borrow them there and there’s no librarian to see or remark on what you’re reading.
That sounds great. That said, my entry wasn’t addressing machines that enable self check-out. Indeed, none of the libraries in my area even have that equipment.
It’s a shame that in an attempt to cut down on wait time due to understaffing, some libraries have seemingly gone to this “help yourself” approach to reserved books. I would think that if a patron requested reserved materials not be left out for self pick-up where anyone else could see what you reserved, libraries would honor the request, but it does bother me that libraries would even use this type of out-in-the-open system.