Protecting your private information and web-surfing habits while using public access computers or public wi-fi is an important part of any plan to protect personal privacy.  Many people, however, are simply unaware of the easy-to-use strategies that will help them  guard their personal information from theft or inadvertent disclosure.

A new tip sheet, Public Computers and Wi-Fi Privacy, helps individuals understand the privacy risks associated with public access computing and outlines how they can protect their privacy while using public computers and public networks.  The tip sheet is available here at chooseprivacyweek.org as a free, downloadable PDF file and libraries, schools, and community groups are invited to share the tip sheet with their users, students, and members.  There are no restrictions on duplicating or posting the tip sheet for free distribution.

The Public Computers and Wi-Fi Privacy tip sheet is courtesy of Data Privacy Day and is offered in celebration of Choose Privacy Week.   Data Privacy Day, held every January 28, is the National Cyber Security Alliance’s annual effort to empower people to protect their privacy and control their digital footprint while encouraging everyone to make the protection of privacy and data a priority.

Many thanks to Tiffany Barrett of Data Privacy Day for her assistance and support!

Tomorrow, May 1, begins our annual observance of Choose Privacy Week. It’s an event that invites everyone to visit their local library and learn more about the importance of protecting your privacy rights in an age of pervasive surveillance.

During Choose Privacy Week, libraries will offer individuals the opportunity to learn, think critically, and make more informed choices about their privacy by offering special resources and sponsoring programs and other special events.

ALA itself will mark Choose Privacy Week with a special online forum that will feature guest commentaries by noted privacy experts and advocates. The forum will be part of this blog, “Voices for Privacy.”  Participants in the online forum include:

• J. Douglas Archer, Librarian at the University of Notre Dame and chair of the ALA-IFC Privacy Subcommittee
• Khaliah Barnes, Administrative Law Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
• Mitra Ebadolahi, Nadine Strossen Fellow, the ACLU National Security Project
• Rachel Levinson-Waldman, counsel to the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice
• Lew Maltby, President, National Workrights Institute
• Joyce McIntosh, library consultant, editor, and former Outreach and Assistive Technology Librarian at Elmhurst Public Library
• Deborah Peel, MD, Patient Privacy Rights and the Coalition for Patient Privacy
• Chip Pitts, Lecturer, Stanford Law School and former Chief Legal Officer of Nokia, Inc.

If you’re planning Choose Privacy Week activities, you’ll find a wealth of resources here on our redesigned website, including free, downloadable PDF edition of the Choose Privacy Week Resource Guide. The Resource Guide contains out-of-the-box activities, events and other suggestions for educating and engaging library users on privacy issues and features several age-specific lesson plans and activities for children and youth.

In addition, a free recording of the April 9 webinar, “Choose Privacy Week Programming @ Your Library,” is now available. The webinar features a panel of librarians and privacy experts discussing ideas and tools for privacy-related programming and outreach.

We’ve also got downloadable banners, web badges, and social media images for privacy mavens who want to promote Choose Privacy Week. The hashtag for Choose Privacy Week is #chooseprivacy.

Also available as “programming in a box” are three Choose Privacy Week documentaries. These documentaries, available as streaming High Definition video, examine the many facets of privacy, government surveillance, and civil liberties and provide a great “jumping off” point for library programs that discuss privacy issues.

• “Choose Privacy” features youth, parents, librarians, and citizens discussing privacy in a digital age, with commentary by author Neil Gaiman and constitutional law scholar Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago.
• “Vanishing Liberties: The Rise of State Surveillance in the Digital Age” examines the government’s growing use and abuse of surveillance tools to track and spy on immigrant communities and the proposals to adopt these same tools to monitor and track the activities of all Americans.
• “Data Mining, Government Surveillance, and Civil Liberties” features Michael German, ACLU senior policy counsel for national security and privacy and former FBI agent.

Remember: the campaign to raise awareness about the importance of privacy rights isn’t limited to just one week. Libraries, schools, and community groups can sponsor programs year round. Let us know what you need – just get in touch by calling or writing Deborah Caldwell-Stone in the Office for Intellectual Freedom at (312) 280-4224 or dstone@ala.org. Additionally, you can follow@privacyala on Twitter and visit www.facebook.com/chooseprivacyweek.

Links to this and other OIF webcasts can be found at http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/oifprograms/webinars.

The deadline for nominations is Monday, May 13, 2013.  The nomination form can be found at http://www.ala.org/ifrt/awardsfinal/hodges/hodges.

The Gerald Hodges Intellectual Freedom Chapter Relations Award will recognize an Intellectual Freedom focused organization that has developed a strong multi-year, ongoing program or a single, one-year project that exemplifies support for Intellectual Freedom, patron confidentiality and anti-censorship efforts. ALA Chapters (state, regional, and student), Divisions, Round Tables and Affiliates (including division affiliates) will be eligible for the award.

The award consists of a citation and $1,000 from the ALA Gerald Hodges Fund, established following Hodges’ death in 2006.

Please consider submitting a nomination for an organization you think deserves the inaugural Hodges Award!

Challenges to library materials take place in schools and libraries across this country every day. One of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom’s primary duties is to track challenges and to provide support to librarians, teachers, library workers, trustees, and others who are dealing with these challenges.

As part of this effort, OIF is pleased to offer a free, interactive webinar on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 from 1-2 p.m. Central time, focused on challenges: formal requests that materials in libraries and schools be removed due to their content or appropriateness. We’ll discuss the current state of challenges – what’s causing controversy right now – and talk about ALA’s efforts to document as many challenges as possible in order to raise awareness about this fundamental intellectual freedom issue. Attendees will learn about the resources and support ALA can offer when libraries are preparing for or responding to challenges. Whether you’re a veteran intellectual freedom fighter or a newbie, this webinar will provide you with information and ideas to help advocate for the freedom to read in your community.

To register, visit http://ala.adobeconnect.com/e34emkdvckk/event/event_info.html. This webinar will be recorded and available in archive after the live event. Contact Angela Maycock at amaycock at ala.org with any questions or concerns.

During Choose Privacy Week, May 1-7, 2013,  we invite everyone to answer the critical question, “Who’s tracking you?”  We believe everyone should have the right to know who’s collecting their information and choose how their private data is used.

“People who understand how personal data is generated, collected, stored, and used are better equipped to take control of their personal data and demand accountability from the agencies and corporations that store and use their information,” says Barbara Jones, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

This year’s Choose Privacy Week observance will feature a week-long online forum that will include an introduction by Barbara Jones and guest commentaries by academics, librarians, and civil liberties experts that discuss current threats to personal privacy and how each threat impacts personal freedoms and civil liberties.  The commentaries will be presented on the newly redesigned website hosted at www.chooseprivacyweek.org, the online hub for Choose Privacy Week activities.

The social media hashtag for Choose Privacy Week is #chooseprivacy.

Scheduled guest commentators include Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center; Shaun Dakin, Privacy Camp; Mitra Ebadolahi, the ACLU National Security Project; Rachel Levinson-Waldman, NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice; Deborah Peel, MD, Patient Privacy Rights; Chip Pitts, Stanford Law School; Lew Maltby, National Workrights Institute; and J. Douglas Archer, Librarian at the University of Notre Dame and chair of the ALA-IFC privacy subcommittee.

If you’re a librarian looking for programming ideas, the recording of OIF’s April 9 Choose Privacy Week programming webinar is now available as a free webcast, featuring librarians and privacy experts discussing ideas and tools for privacy-related programming and outreach in the library.

Posters, buttons, and privacy-protecting RFID sleeves are available in the ALA Store at http://www.alastore.ala.org/cpw

For more information on Choose Privacy Week, visit www.chooseprivacyweek.org or contact Deborah Caldwell-Stone in the Office for Intellectual Freedom at 312-280-4224 or dstone@ala.org.

Out of 464 challenges as reported by the Office for Intellectual Freedom

1. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey.
   Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited for age group
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie.
   Reasons: Offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
3. Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher.
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited for age group
4. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James.
   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
5. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.
   Reasons: Homosexuality, unsuited for age group
6. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.
   Reasons: Homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit
7. Looking for Alaska, by John Green.
   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
8. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
   Reasons: Unsuited for age group, violence
9. The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls
   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
10. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
    Reasons: Sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence

138 more challenges were reported for 2012 than 2011, at least in part due to success of OIF’s Challenge Reporting Campaign. If you know of a book that has been banned or challenged in a library or school, please help us by reporting it.

The Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) announces that Amnesty International USA is the recipient of the 2013 John Philip Immroth Memorial Award.

Amnesty International USA has supported intellectual freedom for 52 years.

“Of special recognition is Amnesty International’s approach to Banned Books Week, said Immroth Award Chair Charles Kratz. Rather than focusing on book censorship, per se, Amnesty International’s approach focused on the logical consequences that would follow when governments are allowed to censor. Beyond the removal or burning of books comes the removal and physical harm to authors, journalists and others.

This year’s award will be presented at the 40th anniversary celebration of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table. In celebrating the 40th anniversary, IFRT will also celebrate our first chair of the Round Table, John Phillip Immroth (1973–1974). Come join the IFRT from 7:30 p.m. – 10 p.m. on Friday, June 28, 2013 at the magnificent Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St. at Michigan Ave., Chicago) for the celebration. Refreshments, including signature cocktails, will be served.

The John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award honors intellectual freedom fighters in and outside the library profession who have demonstrated remarkable personal courage in resisting censorship. The award consists of $500 and a citation. Individuals, a group of individuals or an organization are eligible for the award. The award was first presented in 1976.

Tickets for the celebration are $30 for IFRT members and $40 for non-members. To purchase a ticket, just visit http://ala13.ala.org and go through the Annual Conference registration site. If you already have registered for the Annual Conference, you can just add this ticketed event. Note: if you do not want to attend the rest of the conference, you can purchase tickets just for this event. Just begin the registration process and then select “Ticketed Events.”

Proceeds from the 40th anniversary celebration will go to increase the endowment of the John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award.  You can help. Your event sponsorship donation of $100, $250 or $500 will help to continue this prestigious award for many years to come. The bulk of your sponsorship donation is tax-deductible. To become a sponsor of the IFRT 40^th anniversary celebration, contact Shumeca Pickett at spickett@ala.org or (312) 280-4220.

“Ethics Matters: Ethical Decision-Making for Librarians and Information Professionals” will provide attendees with practical tools for resolving the daily ethical issues librarians face. Dr. Nancy Zimmerman will lead this highly interactive event that will challenge librarians to develop ethical awareness, identify the global common ground of values underlying ethics, analyze ethical issues using real-life dilemmas and resolve dilemmas using practical resolution principles.

This preconference will take place from 8:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. on Friday, June 28, 2013.  Continental breakfast, coffee and other refreshments will be served. Advance registration is required. Tickets cost $80 and are available via ALA’s Annual Conference registration system. Tickets may be purchased as part of Annual Conference registration or separately (note: you do not have to register for the entire Annual Conference to attend). The Event Code for “Ethics Matters” is OIF1.

“Ethics Matters” will introduce attendees to the Ethical Fitness® process, a conceptual framework for decision-making developed by the Institute for Global Ethics (IGE). Founded in 1990 by the late Dr. Rushworth Kidder, IGE is an independent, nonsectarian, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting ethical action in a global context.

Dr. Nancy Zimmerman, professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of South Carolina, is a certified IGE ethics educator and past chair of the ALA Committee on Professional Ethics. She is a past president of the American Association of School Librarians, the New York Library Association and Beta Phi Mu, the International Library Science Honor Society. She served four terms as an ALA Councilor-at-large and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Freedom to Read Foundation.

The ALA Committee on Professional Ethics is charged with augmenting the ALA Code of Ethics by developing explanatory interpretations and additional statements, and by providing guidance to other units of the association developing statements dealing with ethical issues. Ethics education has been identified as a priority for the American Library Association, and this preconference represents a major step toward meeting that identified need.

The free, hour-long online webinar will take place on Tuesday, April 9 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Central Time and will feature four speakers discussing ideas and tools for privacy-related programming and outreach, with an emphasis on sample programs and resources that have proved successful in school, academic, and public library environments:

Michael Zimmer, PhD, will discuss how to use short documentaries on privacy and surveillance to increase awareness among patrons and spark conversations on controversial technologies and practices.

Michael is an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies and director of the Center for Information Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Carolyn Caywood will discuss how librarians can raise awareness of developments that impact privacy in their community by offering civic engagement programs about privacy.

Carolyn worked as a Youth Services librarian and branch manager for Virginia Beach, VA before retiring in 2010. She is currently a Fellow of the Hampton Roads Center for Civic Engagement and serves on the Advisory Committee of the American Library Association’s Center for Civic Life.

Marc Gartler will discuss how Madison Public Library planned and implemented a successful week-long observance for Choose Privacy Week that emphasized preventing identity theft and making informed privacy choices.

Marc joined the management team at Madison Public Library (WI) in 2010 following four years as Library Director at Harrington College of Design. He previously worked on digital library projects at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dr. Deborah Peel will discuss one of privacy’s “hot topics” – patient privacy rights. She will discuss the fight to keep health information private and provide resources for planning programs about protecting our health information both inside and outside of the health care system.

Dr. Peel leads Patient Privacy Rights (PPR) and is the voice of the bipartisan Coalition for Patient Privacy, speaking for 10.3 million Americans who expect to control their sensitive health data in electronic systems.

Register for this free webinar via this link to the registration page.  The webinar will be recorded and available in the archives. For questions about registration or using the webinar platform, contact Angela Maycock at amaycock@ala.org.

Choose Privacy Week 2013 takes place May 1-7 and asks the critical question, “Who’s Tracking You?”   When someone is always watching your every move both online and off, you should have the right to know who’s collecting your information and choose how your private data is used.

Sponsored annually by the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), Choose Privacy Week provides individuals with resources to think critically and make more informed choices about their privacy.

For information about Choose Privacy Week 2013, visit privacyrevolution.org or email Deborah Caldwell-Stone at dstone@ala.org.

Posters, buttons, and resources for Choose Privacy Week are available online through the ALA Store.