Queer Privacy Protection: Challenges and the Fight within Libraries.

Area of Science:

• Information Science
• Library and Information Science
• Digital Privacy Studies
• Queer Studies

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift of library services online, increasing reliance on third-party platforms and generating digital traces.
• Queer communities are particularly vulnerable to surveillance due to risks of outing, including potential loss of housing, employment, and violence.
• Libraries, especially public and school libraries, are increasingly sites of conflict regarding queer individuals and materials.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the challenges of queer digital privacy within libraries in the United States.
• To analyze how cis-heteronormative patriarchal values shape legal and cultural approaches to privacy.
• To explore the incompatibility of traditional privacy frameworks with queer privacy needs in the digital age.

Main Methods:

• Critical examination of existing legal and cultural structures impacting library privacy.
• Analysis of the polysemous, boundary-crossing nature of queerness in relation to digital and material privacy.
• Investigation of sociotechnical materialities, including historical recordkeeping, and their impact on queer privacy.

Main Results:

• Abstract commitments to privacy in libraries are constrained by broader legal and cultural systems.
• Binary-bound, individual-rights-oriented legal privacy approaches are mediated by cis-heteronormative patriarchal values.
• Traditional sociotechnical materialities, like paper-based records, are fundamentally incompatible with queer privacy needs.

Conclusions:

• Existing privacy frameworks in libraries are inadequate for protecting queer patrons in the digital environment.
• There is a critical need to re-evaluate and reconceptualize privacy to be inclusive of queer experiences and needs.
• Libraries must address the systemic issues that render current privacy measures insufficient for vulnerable communities.