The Information Professional

Daniel Messer:

Cyberpunk Librarian: "Why You Need to Remove Your Google Search History (RT @TheLiB: If you're a librarian, you don't want to be logged in to Google when you're doing searches for your users."

"... the Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a how to on removing your search data from Google and why you should. [...] What I’m going to do is build on that for a second and tell you why you as a librarian need to remove that data.

I use Google all day, every day. I’m sure you do too. I don’t know about you, but I’m also signed into Google while I’m doing it. I check my Gmail, I’m dealing with Google+, setting up appointments using Google Calendar, and so on.

And I’m also searching for information regarding patron queries while I’m signed in. What that means is that there is data within my own data set that has nothing to do with me. There are laws, ethics, and all kinds of reasons why patron information is confidential and, until March 1, 2012, that information on Google is confidential. After March 1st, Google will use that data to build a better Google which means offering you better ads, recommending videos, and that kind of thing.

But that data isn’t mine, or at least part of it isn’t mine. It’s data that was generated helping a library patron. I propose to you that such data, for all intents and purposes, belongs to the patron. That data wouldn’t have been generated if not for the patron, just like a library card wouldn’t have been generated if a patron hadn’t applied for one. Since we, as librarians, are tasked with protecting patron information, we need to protect that information too."

Electronic Frontier post here: www.eff.org/ ;