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Greetings! I have a question for the collective, especially for those knowledgeable about patron privacy issues. I would like to know more about the search behavior of users of a Large Public Medical Database. The admins are loath to share any search logs from this resource as they are (rightly!) concerned about protecting user privacy. This leaves investigators (like me) unable to use this data to do things like, to use a completely random example, figure out how often end-users are using abbreviations instead of spelling out a medical term in their search. I'm wondering if it's possible to demonstrate to the proprietors that it would be possible to share at least some of this information with me in a safe way. I understand that sharing a full log entry that includes such identifiable info as an IP address or userid is obviously a Bad Idea in terms of privacy. My question is whether there is a model of sharing search info with outsiders that's far enough to the *other* end of the spectrum as to presumptively be okay? What if one only shared bare searches and timestamps without being tying them to any information about the searcher? Would it help if you discarded the timestamps, and instead shared just a dump of all the search strings that were received between two dates? If *that* was also deemed to be too risky, would it matter if you were sharing instead a random sample of those searches? Any pointers for getting started on this question would be greatly appreciated! Edwin V. Sperr, MLIS Clinical Information Librarian AU/UGA Medical Partnership Office of Graduate Medical Education St. Mary's Hospital 1230 Baxter Street Athens, GA 30606 (706) 389-3864 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>