Privacy concerns with new live web reference software

[Jenette Yikles]

First off, don't get me wrong, I have seen a demo of the new live web 
reference software that LSSI will be launching at ALA (see previous message 
"Live Online Reference Services at ALA") ... and I think it is great stuff, 
and my company will probably be purchasing it.  It allows librarians and 
patrons to work together live and real time over the Web, and that means the 
librarian can push Web pages to the patron, guide the patron's browser 
around the Web, fill out search forms together, and so forth.  And I tend to 
agree with Coffman (for once!) ... that this stuff probably represents the 
future of reference ... if there is to be a future for reference, anyway.

HOWEVER,  ... the software also raises some significant privacy issues, that 
I think we all need to be thinking about ... especially if the software does 
become widely adopted for reference purposes.   More specifically, the 
software saves complete transcripts of all reference interactions (including 
all chat and URLs visited) and compiles a patron profile that allows the 
librarian to see all the previous questions the patron has asked.  As 
Coffman points out, there are some great advantages in this ... it might 
allow us to provide the patron with updated information on questions they 
had asked earlier (for example:  "Mr. Jones, I just want to let you know, 
that there is a new release of the Consumer Price Index which updates the 
data we gave you last week") and, of course, it would allow us to better 
understand our patrons and how they use our reference services.  But it also 
associates a patron's name with what ... up until now ... has been a pretty 
anonymous process ... and it is not difficult to imagine the possibilities 
for abuse  ... just to take an extreme example, could Kenneth Star subpoena 
our reference records to see if Monica Lewinsky had called to ask us about 
spot removal?  Of course, in library circ systems, we have always solved 
this problem by expunging the patron's name from the records ... but then 
along comes people like Amazon, who prove that there are a whole lot of 
people out there ... including myself ... who are more than willing to give 
up a little privacy in return for the personalized recommendations, and so 
on  ... that those systems can give you.   So, like so many aspects of 
modern technology .. this new reference software also seems to be a 
double-edged sword.

So, while I am definitely impressed by this new technology, and I would 
certainly urge you to check it out at ALA .... I think we all need to be 
thinking about the possible privacy implications of the software, and ways 
we might address them.  I would be interested to know what others think 
about this  ... I'll post this to a few other revelvant lists, and see what 
kind of reaction it gets there as well.

Yours,

Jenette Yikles
Manager, Information Center
ECES Technologies
yiklesj at hotmail.com




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