Hey DLF PET crew! It was lovely sitting in with you all at the most recent meeting. Not coming from an academic librarianship background I always leave full of new information. Want to welcome Eliza and Paige to leadership team too 😊

 

In the meeting, I mentioned a few different ways that members of PET could work with the ALA Privacy Subcommittee (where I serve as Chair). Wanted to send those out to everyone in case there was interest. By working together we are sure to reach a more diverse and larger audience. If you want more information on how to plug into any of these opportunities feel free to send me an email.

• Become a blogger for the Choose Privacy Every Day website. We used to only publish blogs during Choose Privacy Week. Instead, we’re trying to build up a larger audience with regular content.  The Office for Intellectual Freedom is running the site and you can apply to write through their blogger application. We are starting to get more views and think we had about 3,000 visitors last month. You’d be free to write about anything in the privacy world that might be of interest to librarians.
• Help improve the CPE website. The site needs some love! I have a full revamp planned with a section that is just for academic libraries. What’s missing is the content we put there. Would love to get a couple of volunteers that could work with me on choosing the right trainings and resources for this section.
• Teach a class… OIF/ALA is looking to provide more professional development opportunities for library workers. We’d love to see more around privacy! I was just asked to teach a class on privacy audits and have no clue where I would even find the time to do such a thing. This would be a paid opportunity. If you’re interested in that topic or have something else in mind, let me know. We can explore possibilities.
• Host a webinar or town hall. Have an issue, speaker, or topic you want to address around privacy? We’ve got the platform and can market it to membership. Michelle can attest to the quick turnaround time on making this happen.
• Lastly, I mentioned we have a working group of vendors and librarians that are discussing privacy misalignments and seeking solutions. If you have examples from privacy policies or from interactions with vendors where our library values and ethics around privacy are not in alignment please send them my way.

 

Appreciate you all and looking forward to hearing what this group takes up next!

 

Erin Berman

Division Director of the Learning Group

Alameda County Library

she/her/hers

510-745-1520