University of Illinois

The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign proposes a national forum on privacy and security, enabling experts to collaborate with public library representatives in an exploratory study to gather, learn, and discuss what technological mechanisms are in place to protect the nation's public library patrons' privacy. More specifically, this project will seek to identify the existence and absence of privacy protecting technologies (software and/or hardware) in public library systems of all sizes, considering the differences in comparing smaller rural vs. larger urban public library systems and what unique challenges they face. The results of this project will impact the capacity of library staff and patrons to access and engage with online content while protecting user privacy and library system integrity.