Good news for Californians who treasure their privacy. The Golden State has enacted two new laws that protect your right to read whatever you want in the library, even in electronic form with some measure of confidentiality.
The first new statute pertains to confidentiality, and extends to contractors that handle patron use records, including Amazon.com, which now offers library e-books for Kindle. While the confidentiality law has a broad reach in that it protects all library user records (books, videos, database searches etc.), the second new statute, the Reader Privacy Act goes further. It reaches nonlibrary users as well. It prohibits all commercial providers of “book services” from disclosing, or being compelled to disclose, any personal information relating to users of the book services. “Books” are defined as paginated or similarly organized content in printed, audio, electronic, or other format, but excluding magazines and newspapers).LibraryLaw Blog (full article)
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