Using Guidelines and Checklists
The Core Questions are a great starting place for any audit. The next step is to dig in deeper and align your library with the privacy guidelines established by the American Library Association (ALA). ALA has created a set of guidelines and checklists that are available to assist librarians, libraries, schools, and vendors to develop best practices for online privacy, data management, and security.
The guidelines and checklists were created for every library, of any size, to be able to use. The checklists are broken down into three priority levels.
Priority 1
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Items should be achievable by every library. These are the must do items.
Priority 2
- Items will be able to be met by larger systems and those with more control over their IT systems.
Priority 3
- Are for those libraries with a deeper technological understanding and resources. Some of these will be optional.
You can use these checklists as part of the audit process. They will enable your library to be in alignment with the ALA guidelines and give you insight about current practices and policies.
Exercise
- Read through all of the checklists
- Select the priority level your library would like to meet.
- Priority 1
- Priority 2
- Priority 3
Exercise
Complete the Privacy Checklist Overview. As you complete the checklist, ask yourself, “Is our library already doing this?”
or, “Is our library doing this, but it needs work?” or if you’re not doing it all, “What does our library need to do in order to complete this checklist item and who’s going to do it?”.
