Patriot Act

ALA Code of Ethics

ALA Page on USA Patriot Act

"We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquire or tranmitted." 

New laws passed recently have meant that policies that protect patron privacy may need to be re-examined and updated.

Interlibrary Loan has always been a place where records have been retained for long periods of time.  Copyright law requires that information about filled copy requests must be retained for 3 years.  Some states have additional requirements.

While some transactions must be preserved to meet the demands of the law, the patron information is not required to accompany the requests.  Libraries may wish to consider removing patron information from completed and cancelled requests.   It may be possible to do this electronically with the use of an Interlibrary Loan management system - check with the vendor for information.  Paper forms will, of course, require manual intervention.