From: "Hinchliffe, Lisa W" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 21:10:16 +0000 Great questions on data, privacy, and user experience. This message may get a little long since I have been tracking on a lot of this for awhile now - my files are lengthy - but I'll try for a summary/high points! I'm not sure any of it rises to the level of "raging" debate. Happy to share more if something in particular interests. I think a number of recent posts on Scholarly Kitchen (Joe Esposito's http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/01/22/big-sister/; Roger Schonfeld's http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/02/05/data-for-discovery/, and Phill Jones' http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/02/16/outliers-and-the-importance-of-anonymity-usage-data-versus-snooping-on-your-customers/) have done a nice job of starting to sketch the contours of the issues at play here. These are posts as well where I would encourage to read the comments. Good dialogue happening. Within ALA, LITA has recently created a Patron Privacy Technologies Interest Group (http://www.ala.org/lita/about/igs/public/lit-Pp). And, of course, the ACRL Value of Academic Libraries Initiative (http://www.acrl.org/value) began advocated for more systematic data collection and analysis in order to support creating, documenting, and communicating the value of academic and research libraries a couple of years ago - which necessarily raised these issues as well. At the risk of self-citation ... this issue that librarians need to engage with information content providers is part of what is behind the "Analytics and Privacy: A Proposed Framework for Negotiating Service and Value Boundaries" session that I presented with Andrew Asher at CNI this past December. The session was recorded (http://www.cni.org/news/video-analytics-and-privacy/) and the PPT is online as well (http://www.cni.org/topics/assessment/analytics-and-privacy-a-proposed-framework-for-negotiating-service-and-value-boundaries/). The draft framework is also available online (https://www.evernote.com/shard/s22/sh/3d95fca3-eba3-4902-8117-17aedd89dc19/474dfbb91811d4cda2a68d0f63a5aac4). We welcome any and all suggestions for revisions. If you watch the video, you will also see that Andrew and I are not in complete agreement about the right approach so one thing we are hopefully doing is modeling the kind of engaged discussion we think needs to happen with people on all sides of this topic. Andrew and I will be hosting a larger discussion/program on the next version of the the Analytics and Privacy Framework at ALA Annual in San Francisco - "All the Data: Privacy, Service Quality, and Analytics" on Saturday, June 27, 10:30-11:30 am, specific location not yet known. For what it is worth, I think there are two components of the discussion we need to be having. First, librarians need to become better informed about how data are collected, passed, parsed, etc. and the degree to which the features we and our users have desired in products are dependent on these data flows. I'm not confident that we are as fully educated on how the data work to have as robust a discussion as we need to. Second, we need to make decisions to align our practices with our dual and (in this arena) competing values of privacy and service quality. At the simple level, we have done this in circulation records by keeping a record that ties the book and user together only when the book is checked out, but when it is checked out we do compromise absolute privacy of the individual in order to serve the common good of getting our books back. The networked content environment is admittedly way more complicated than that though! At the moment I worry that the conversations have tended to a "the sky is falling" rhetoric about privacy that overwhelms us from taking action as compared with an intentional and deeply reflective analysis of the future that we want to create and what it will take to get there. One final thought - there is one other company that collects, manages, etc. user data that I worry about along with Pearson. iParadigms may have even more troubling data, willingly provided (and indeed students and others are often mandated to submit their data). If you don't recognize the name, iParadigms is the company that runs Turnitin and WriteCheck (plagiarism checking of student work), iThenticate (plagiarism checking on article manuscripts for journals, grant proposals, etc.), and Turnitin for Admissions (checking admissions essays, personal statements, etc.). Yes, it appears there is a company with a database of grant proposals and manuscripts submitted ... not just those funded and accepted. All tied to user data. I'd be far more concerned as a researcher about that user data than any trails of what I searched for in a library resource! Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe Professor/Coordinator for Strategic Planning/Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [log in to unmask] ________________________________________ From: Bernie Reilly <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 18:17:59 +0000 My intent in referencing the Politico article was to the broach the topic of user information in the educational and scholarly publishing realm. Factual errors about who owns what notwithstanding, it seems to me that the collection and use of information about student and faculty research by large commercial entities like Pearson represents a turning point. The Politico report suggests to me that Pearson is using its integration of online learning, course management, training, testing, and publishing platforms, to aggregate -- and monetize -- information about those in academia. While federal regulations strictly limit what Pearson can do with data on K-12 students, there are few restrictions on what they can do with information they gather post-secondary users. I wonder about the potential impact of this on libraries in particular. Traditionally, libraries have erected robust firewalls around circulation data, data about who reads and uses what. With the advent of electronic materials ("E-books: the books that read you.") granular usage data can now be gathered by publishers. While these data are in most instances anonymized, the practice encroaches upon the absolute privacy that researchers once had. Given the degree to which information industry business models depend on monetizing user data, I doubt that this reality is likely to change, even with government regulations. Debate about this may well be raging somewhere out there in the research libraries world. If so, I would be grateful if any of my fellow Liblicense readers could direct me to that venue. Bernie Reilly CRL -----Original Message----- From: David Groenewegen <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2015 10:35:01 +1100 To be fair, Pearson do own 47% of Penguin Random House - they may not be the majority owner, but I'm assuming they make some money off it and and have some say in how it is run. David David Groenewegen Director, Research Infrastructure Monash University Library VIC 3800 AUSTRALIA [log in to unmask] On 11/02/2015 2:14 PM, LIBLICENSE wrote: > From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 22:11:06 -0500 > > I don't want to defend Pearson, but surely that article in Politico > could have been fact-checked. A good place to begin would have been > by using Pearson's own Financial Times or its half-interest in the > Economist. Such an investigation would have revealed that Pearson is > not the owner of Penguin Random House (that must have come as a shock > to Bertelsmann) and that the statement of how Pearson really got going > in the U.S. is simply wrong, as the acquisition of the U.S.'s largest > and most profitable textbook publisher, Prentice-Hall, was already > completed. > > I am sure there are a bunch of bad guys at Pearson. But what is > Politico's defense? > > Joe Esposito > > > On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 9:02 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> >> >> From: Bernie Reilly <[log in to unmask]> >> Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 01:35:16 +0000 >> >> The in-depth report on the British publishing giant Pearson in >> today’s Politico (“No profit left behind”) >> >> http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026.html?h >> p=r1_4 >> >> is a timely sequel to a recent New Yorker piece on Jeb Bush’s links >> to the for-profit education industry. One Pearson executive recently >> claimed that Pearson is the largest aggregator of student information. >> >> Bernie Reilly >> CRL