Confidentiality

In the Official Secrets Act there is a section that regulates what secrecy must be applied for information that is registered in conjunction with a private person's library loans.

The Official Secrets Act, chapter 9, section 22

"Confidentiality applies to library activities that involve information about individuals in registers as regards, what is borrowed, reserved or any other form of booking that might provide information that would reveal for whom the information concerns or anyone who is closely related so that they might sustain injury or harm. As regards information of public record, confidentiality shall apply for up to 20 years. The law includes all other libraries where the right-of-access principle previously applied to information about an individual's library loans, viz. public libraries, school libraries, hospital libraries, as well as scientific and research libraries. Of course, the protection of confidential information not only applies to the borrowing of books but it also to all lending material in the library.”

(Swedish Code of Statutes 1989:713, Planning and research centre 1988/89:67, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Constitution KU38).

Rules and regulations

The following rules apply at the libraries in the Umeå Region:

• No one other than the staff of the library is authorised to see what someone has borrowed or reserved.
• We do not give out information about who has borrowed a certain title, or what a certain person has borrowed. The same applies to reservations.
• Recall notices for overdue books, invoices and notices about reserved books are sent in sealed envelopes.
• When we assist borrowers at a terminal/computer, we try to see to it that only the person we are assisting can see the monitor, especially when the information about the borrower is up. This is one of the reasons that we have queue tickets at the adult information desk as well as at the return book counter at the central public library.

Professional secrecy agreement

Members of the staff who have contact with the borrowers' register must sign an agreement of professional secrecy. This also applies to part-time employees and trainees. The person in charge of operations is responsible for the signing and safe-keeping of the agreement.

Address register

The libraries retrieve personal data from the official Swedish population register, SPAR. The data we have access to is name and address. If you have national registration, in Sweden your permanent address will be changed automatically when you notify SPAR by way of the National Registration or the Tax Authority. However, we need your current address so that we can send reservation notices, recall notices and invoices.