Firstly, thanks for this interesting discussion. I find browser tech to
be one of the most interesting and sometimes frustrating pieces of
software we use (every single day).

I'm new to the library so I can not speak to historical usage, but
anecdotal evidence from coworkers and staff seems to be either Chrome,
or Firefox are the 1st choices. I've not checked any stats on the usage
from patrons.

I personally use Tor Browser Bundle,
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en, on my work
station. But the computer image used for our patron terminals doesn't
include that browser, so the vanilla firefox would be the one i
recommend to avoid the google's data surveillance dragnet.

I also believe current web pages rely too heavily on javascript,
although I don't think that trend will change any time soon. But as
content creators and influencers, we have the opportunity to make some
of the tech choices, that can either feed into big surveillance or not.
For example, creating non google captcha's, can be just one way to avoid
data leakage away from our sites, while also giving a small creative way
to contribute to a libraries code base.
Thanks again folks, for the discussion.


--
Nick Critser
Systems Analyst/Programmer
Arthur W. Diamond Law Library
Columbia University
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