Public Libraries Going Green20121Kathryn Miller. Public Libraries Going Green. Chicago, IL: American Library Association 2010. 103 pp., ISBN: 978‐08389‐1018‐4 $US45 ALA Public Library Handbook Series

I’m so excited that the Annual Conference this year is in my hometown. As a passionate steward of government information in Chicago, here are a few highlights of my city and my collection.The last time the American Library Association conference was in Chicago was the Midwinter Meetings held in February 2015, when attendees got a taste of Chicago’s winter. Between Saturday night and Monday morning, more than nineteen inches of snow fell as librarians settled into hotel rooms and bars from Streeterville to McCormick Place.1 In winters past, such storms have at times been politically significant. After the Blizzard of 1979, Jane Byrne won the mayoral election in an unprecedented upset. Chicagoans had re-elected the incumbent mayor in the five previous elections (Richard J. Daley served from 1955 to 1976). Michael Bilandic’s term as mayor could have been the start to another dynasty, if not for the snow. You could take Whet Moser’s word for it, in “Snowpocalyspe Then: How the Blizzard of 1979 Cost the Election for Michael Bilandic.”Or you could use the government information expertise and collections of the Chicago Public Library.

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BiblioComprehension

Emerging Library & Information Perspectives ◽

10.5206/elip.v1i1.195 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

pp. 59-90

Author(s):

Tanis Schumilas ◽

Alysha Anderson ◽

Holly Ottewell ◽

Alexandra Turcotte

Keyword(s):

Public Libraries ◽

Code Of Ethics ◽

American Library Association ◽

Ethical Responsibility ◽

Library Services ◽

Bill Of Rights ◽

Privacy Concerns ◽

American Library ◽

Privacy And Confidentiality

Increasingly, public libraries are incorporating interactive, collaborative, and user-centred social discovery tools into traditional library services with the goal of better serving their patrons. These tools are designed to encourage communication and interaction between library patrons and staff by providing a platform for patrons to evaluate, comment on, create, and share personalized lists of their favourite items in a library’s collection. BiblioCommons is one example of a discovery tool that has been embraced by public libraries and their patrons to this end. Yet, while tools such as BiblioCommons offer many benefits to library patrons, relying on these tools to deliver core library services may violate patron privacy and confidentiality. Using the American Library Association Code of Ethics and the Library Bill of Rights as a framework, we explore the websites of Canadian public libraries that use BiblioCommons to discover how these libraries communicate privacy concerns associated with the use of this service to their patrons. Based on our findings, we argue that libraries are largely failing in their ethical responsibility to alert patrons to the privacy and confidentiality concerns associated with BiblioCommons.

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