Civil liberties have become an issue of much debate and concern in recent years due to the passing of the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Library records are an important topic in that debate.

Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act reads, “The director for the FBI, or a designee of the director, may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (such as books, records, papers, documents and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

Frances O’Brien, dean of West Virginia University Libraries, said libraries should be a place where students can come and find information on any subject they want and not be questioned about it.

When a book is returned to a WVU library, and it is not late, the record of that transaction is deleted.

“We are interested in who has our books checked out, because we may need to contact you if another patron requests the book, or if you forget to return it,” O’Brien said. “Once you do return the book to us, or pay any overdue fines on the book, we aren’t interested.”

The American Civil Liberties Union Web site www.aclu.org, says that, without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now, as a result of the USA Patriot Act, has the power to access each citizen’s most private medical records, library records and student records.

Myra Lowe, director of the Downtown Library Complex, said WVU Libraries adheres strictly to the American Library Association’s policy on confidentiality.

The ALA policy used by WVU states that library records are highly privileged and confidential. Records are not to be made available except following a process, order or subpoena by law, and that library employees will resist such process, order or subpoena until proper cause has been shown as determined by WVU campus legal counsel.

Unlike book transactions, records of students’ online activity are not deleted. Online activity can be monitored, but the library does not make a practice of doing it, Lowe said.

According to the ACLU Web site, “The FBI could invoke Section 215 (the USA PATRIOT Act) to require a library to produce records showing who had borrowed a particular book or to produce records showing who had visited a particular Web site.”

“It doesn’t really matter to me,” said senior Elementary Education major Kathy Doll, about the possibility of having her activity monitored.

Sophomore Political Science major Gwyneth MacMurtrie felt differently.
“Your civil liberties are rights that are given to you. Many of them, in the new information age, are being challenged because of the simple access to computers, medical records and other important documents,” she said.

“I do not want people to be able to access my personal information.”

By Brian S. Armstrong
Daily Athenaeum Staff Writer
brian.armstrong@mail.wvu.edu

The Government Information Online service allows researchers to go online and ask questions or seek information about state and federal government. Patrons access the service through a link on the WVU Libraries webpage http://www.libraries.wvu.edu or directly at http://govtinfo.org. From this site, users can e-mail a question or engage in a real-time chat session with a librarian.

“More and more citizens are seeking information about government programs, services and policies, and this virtual reference service makes it easy for Internet users to get that information quickly from qualified reference specialists all over America,” said Penny Pugh, head reference librarian at the Downtown Campus Library.

“While researchers can continue to visit the WVU Libraries in person to obtain such information, I am pleased that those with Internet access can use this exciting new service to pose questions directly to government information specialists,” she added.

Pugh is coordinating a team of librarians from WVU that includes Christine Chang, Kelly Diamond, Hilary Fredette and Barbara Lagodna. They share responsibilities with colleagues at the 30 other libraries to respond to e-mail inquires and answer questions in a chat format.

The site promises responses within 48 hours for e-mails. Immediate assistance, however, is available by chatting online with a government information librarian. The schedule is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday.

If the pilot program is successful, Pugh said that the library will consider becoming part of a permanent virtual government information reference service.

By: Monte Maxwell
Spirit, 02/10/05, p 6