From NISO: Invitation to NISO Patron Privacy Virtual Meetings

This article has been translated into Polish.

Over the next couple months, NISO is managing a project to "develop a Consensus Framework to Support Patron Privacy in Digital Library and Information Systems." ((From NISO's March 11, 2015, press release about the project.)) I'm honored and excited to be on the panel exploring this topic and creating the recommendations as this is a topic I've written about extensively on this blog. In May and June, NISO is conducting virtual meetings on four topics that will lead up to a day and a half in-person discussion at the ALA annual meeting at the end of June in San Francisco. Reproduced below is the invitation for people to listen in on the virtual meeting discussions. I hope (and expect) that there will be a twitter hashtag for those participating in the call (whether on the panel or in the audience) to add their thoughts. The #nisoprivacy hashtag will be used to gather the discussion online.

As announced last month, NISO, the National Information Standards Organization has launched an initiative to develop a Consensus Framework to Support Patron Privacy in Digital Library and Information Systems with the generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project involves a series of community discussions on how libraries, publishers and information systems providers can build better privacy protection into their operations and the subsequent formulation of a framework document on the privacy of patron data in these systems.

We are pleased to announce the availability of a limited number of listen-only "seats" to the virtual meetings that comprise the first phase of the project. The virtual meetings will involve a range of industry participants including librarians, publishers, system vendors, legal experts and general non-profit participants, discussing various 'lenses' of patron privacy. The dates and times of these events are scheduled as follows:

• Patron privacy in internal library systems: Thursday, May 7, 10:00 am-1:00 pm ET
• Patron privacy in vendor systems: Thursday, May 21, 10:00 am-1:00 pm ET
• Patron privacy in publisher systems: Friday, May 22, 9:00 am-12 noon ET
• Legal frameworks influencing data sharing and policies: Friday, June 19, 1:00-4:00 pm ET

If you would like to attend any of these meetings as a listen-only guest, please fill out the RSVP form at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/niso-patron-privacy. [Registration for each meeting will close at noon Eastern time the day before the meeting.]

Each of these virtual meetings will be a three-hour web-based session designed to lay the groundwork for an in-person meeting at the conclusion of the American Library Association meeting in San Francisco, CA in June. We plan to make a live stream of that meeting available to the community. More information about that video stream of the meeting will be distributed next month.

Following the in-person meeting, a Framework document will be completed detailing the privacy principles and recommendations agreed to by the participants, and then circulated for public comment and finalization. More information, including a version of the project proposal, is available on the NISO website at: http://www.niso.org/topics/tl/patron_privacy/.

Thank you for your interest in this important topic that faces the library and information communities.