| California Academic & Research Libraries |
ALIGN Events
2024Tour—Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Group Discussion—CARL Conference 2024 ALIGN Interest Group ShowcasePatron Privacy v. Big Data: Line in the Sand or Slippery Slope?
When the Patriot Act enabled government to secretly surveil the borrowing and usage activities of library users, librarians adhered admirably to the ALA Bill of Rights tenet of safeguarding patrons' “right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use” by ceasing to maintain borrowing records. Over twenty years hence, usage analytics and patron data are provided to libraries in abundant and granular detail by publishers and database vendors.
While such information provides valuable insight into user habits and preferences to improve services and demonstrate library value, as well as the ability to gauge student research habits to link to student-success initiatives, what has become of the concept of patron privacy? Are libraries at odds with the specificity of vendor-provided user data, or has privacy been sacrificed at the altar of greater insight as it is employed for more targeted collections, instruction, and advising decisions? Do users care about the data collected on them? How is user privacy addressed in resource licensing agreements? How are libraries responding when campus administrators ask for student data from the library? Are libraries alerting users to what data is collected from/about them when they use library services, and how that data is used? How are librarians grappling with these conflicting concepts? ALIGN's Co-ordinating Committee led participants in a group-participation discussion of this issue and what libraries are doing to help slow the erosion of our right to privacy. 2023Panel—When the Back of House Becomes the Front of House: The Changing World of Technical Services
2022Tour—CSU East Bay Library renovationCal State East Bay opened the doors to their new library, the CORE, on 16 August, and ALIGN member toured the sparkling and spacious new facility on 4 November.
CORE building
CORE and grounds
New electronic signage
New carrels and expanded shelving
New study pods Panel—CARL Conference 2022 ALIGN Interest Group Showcase
This presentation, entitled "Empowering Cataloguing & Acquisitions Staff by Embracing Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Justice", grew out an article written for the 2020 volume Library Technical Services: Adapting to a Changing Environment, edited by Stacey Marien for Purdue University Press’s Charleston Insights in Library, Archival and Information Sciences series. That article, in turn, grew out of a 2016 report entitled “Creating a Social Justice Mindset: Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice in the Collections Directorate of the MIT Libraries”. Presenters Martina Anderson (MIT Libraries) and Rhonda Kauffman (University of Connecticut) focused on the challenges and opportunities present in undertaking a sustained effort to achieve DEIJ specifically within technical services, highlighting how staff can incorporate DEIJ values into the regular practice of their work to contribute to dismantling existing structures of inequity and privilege. 2021Panel—Doors Wide Open: Advancing Inclusive Access to Special Collections
2020Panel—CARL Conference 2020 ALIGN Interest Group ShowcaseOn 5 June 2020, ALIGN presented a panel on "Reference Services in an Age of Metamorphosis" for its Interest Group Showcase at the CARL 2020 Virtual Conference. The panel session featured speakers from three different university libraries, who shared the different ways they have been studying the research experiences and service preferences of their users in order to reconfigure or enhance their reference services to better serve the changing needs of their students and researchers. 2019Late-summer field trip—
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