Libraries Struggle to Protect Privacy While Offering Convenience
Libraries around the country are borrowing techniques from Amazon, Netflix and other Internet companies that keep information about their customers' purchases and preferences so they can better cater to their needs or tastes. The hope is that these on-line programs, whose feasibility is still being tested at this point, will help libraries appeal to a generation that often prizes convenience over privacy. Yet for the libraries, privacy remains an important issue. The data such personalized programs store - information about what journals someone is reading, for example - could be sought by government agencies under laws like the USA Patriot Act.
Books for Lending, Data for Taking, New York Times, November 20, 2005.
