The article is a reflection by an electronic services librarian. She is reflecting on the troubles surrounding privacy issues for SUNY Cortland library patrons. According to the article, the university had four areas in which patron information was being held, unnecessarily. They were: ILS, LLS, websites, and proxy servers. The author didn't try to tackle the ILS problem because it was, at the time, already being addressed by SUNY Cortland. The ILL system was unnecessarily keeping track of the books students requested. The websites were keeping browsing histories, cookies, and IP addresses. Then, the proxy servers were keeping track of IP addresses used to gain remote access to library resources.
To remedy these problems, the author (Karen Combs) did the following. She eliminated the history of ILL loans, changed the CPU settings so that the browser histories and cookies would be deleted upon log-out, and removed the last 8 digits of the IP addresses that were using proxy servers. By doing this, in addition to eliminating SSNs within the library/student record system, she was able to greatly increase anonymity among digital resource users within her library system.
*Coombs, K. A. Protecting User Privacy in the Age of Digital Libraries. Computers in Libraries v. 25 no. 6 (June 2005) pp. 16-20
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