Elisabeth A. Jones and Joseph W. Janes of the Information School at the University of Washington recently published an academic paper about the privacy implications of the Google Books project. The paper is entitled 'Anonymity in a World of Digital Books: Google Books, Privacy, and the Freedom to Read.'
Jones and Janes note that the fundamental goal of the American public library has - for more than a century - been to support the freedom of inquiry, and thereby the freedom of expression, necessary to the functioning of a free society. That freedom of inquiry requires that library patrons, or Google Books users, are afforded a modicum of privacy to read that which they want to read, without fear of reprisal or exposure.
As the library world stands now, the American Library Association (ALA) Code of Ethics places a very high value on patron privacy. Jones and Janes quote from the relevant passage which states that librarians should 'protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted.' They also note that many state laws prohibit the release of library data to unauthorised third parties, some even going so far as to specifically exempt library records from typically broad FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) laws.
Google, on the other hand, reportedly takes a very dim view of the freedom of inquiry that is enshrined in the ALA's code of ethics. The Google Books privacy policy explicitly states that Google will collect several types of information, the authors note, adding that the company reserves its right to aggregate usage data from Google Books with other data linked to users' Google Accounts. This means that one's book purchase history or personalised reading lists may be combined with one's usage data from Google Search, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Picasa, or any of the company's myriad other services.
The Open Book Alliance (OBA) has long argued that there are critical privacy implications of Google Books, and the authors are seen to sum up many of OBA's concerns very succinctly. According to them, by stripping away many of the traditional safeguards on reader privacy - whether legal, ethical, or situational - shifting free-of-charge, publicly available reading from libraries to Google Books complicates the capacity of the context to support truly unfettered inquiry and knowledge diffusion. For all the reasons already noted - controversial interests, the ability of reading material to reveal other things about the reader, or pure embarrassment - a lack of privacy with regard to the selection of reading materials can significantly chill individuals' desire and/or ability to explore as broadly as they might wish.
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