Library and Information Science Commons^™

The Paradox Of Privacy: Revisiting A Core Library Value In An Age Of Big Data And Linked Data, D. Grant Campbell, Scott R. Cowan

Leddy Library Publications

Protecting user privacy and confidentiality is fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship, and such protection constitutes one of eleven values in the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (2004). This paper addresses the concerns of protecting privacy in the library as they relate to library users who are defining, exploring, and negotiating their sexual identities with the help of the library’s information, programming, and physical facilities. In so doing, we enlist the aid of Garret Keizer, who, in Privacy (2012), articulates a fresh theory of the concept in light of American social life in the twenty-first century. …