Libraries Really Mean it About Keeping Quiet

dcstone says:

Some Questions and Responses

Is a twelve-year-old, a fourteen year old, or a seventeen year old a “child” whose privacy should be routinely violated at the discretionary whim of a librarian?

Does reading about the forbidden always imply an intent to engage in behavior? Does reading about the forbidden actually function as a release valve and proxy? Doesn’t the First Amendment stand for the proposition that there is no such thing as “thought crime?”

When do a librarian’s professional and ethical responsibilities terminate? What justifies ignoring those responsibilities? If physicians and lawyers and counselors can keep confidentiality as professionals, why shouldn’t librarians? And why shouldn’t that duty of confidentiality be offered to minors, especially older minors?

Some quick responses to points raised this thread:

• If your state library records confidentiality law imposes a duty of confidentiality, and if you, as a librarian subject to that law, reveal protected information about your users without the requisite court order or legal process, you have violated the law and opened up your library to possible legal action.
• And yes, those confidentiality laws apply to youth, too. Youth have legal rights. Youth have First Amendment rights. And the library profession’s ethical standards affirm those rights.
• Columbine is a red herring. The young men involved in the shooting had open, home-based access to the Internet, and engaged in behavior in their homes that might have raised a red flag about their future behavior. Libraries, and library usage, had little or nothing to do with the shootings at Columbine. Forcing adolescents to consent to the violation of their confidentiality does not engender trust nor solve the problem. Indeed, it simply teaches youth to keep even more secrets from the adults in their lives.
• Financial responsibility is a red herring. “Being a taxpayer” doesn’t entitle one to summarily terminate another’s legal right to confidentiality, whether that right is conferred by law or by library policy. If financial responsibility is prerequisite to maintaining a library user’s confidentiality, then make each individual financially responsible for their borrowed books, regardless of age. (It’s not like adults don’t steal or lose materials, after all.) A fifteen-year-old who can’t get the books needed for a school project or log onto the Internet because of fines or overdues will learn a quick lesson in financial responsibility.
• Libraries, and librarians, do not act in loco parentis. In loco parentis is a legal term of art and implies a legal relationship. It’s not simply acting in some ham-handed way to impose one’s personal viewpoint of suitability on someone else’s child – it’s assuming a legal duty to care for the minor, and carries along with that responsibility real, potential legal liabilities. Want to drive a city attorney crazy? Tell him or her you’re a public employee acting in loco parentis when the law doesn’t impose that relationship on the public employee or the city.
• Finally, children and teens rarely build bombs. They are far more likely to be using library resources to explore issues about their fears, their identity, or their sexuality, research that teens in particular do not share with their parents for understandable reasons. If a teen is trying to find out about being gay or lesbian, or if he or she is trying to find out about alternative religious beliefs or alternative political beliefs, or if they’re trying to learn about sex and birth control and STDs, they’re entitled to every inch of privacy given to adult library patrons. And if they’re a child or a teen trying to find out how to get out of a physically, sexually, or mentally abusive situation, protecting their confidentiality may be life-saving.