Privacy literacy: From theory to practice

Libraries and librarians have dealt with patron privacy issues since their inception, often serving as educators and advocates. In today’s social media-filled landscape, patron privacy has moved from the safeguarding of traditional library records to the creation, use, and ownership of information maintained in an online world. As the core educators for many aspects of literacy, librarians need to keep pace with the issues their users face daily. This paper centers on privacy literacy as an independent area of instruction for library sessions. It reviews a theoretical framework to support privacy literacy instruction and showcases resources and tools for creating privacy literacy education. Finally, privacy issues in healthcare are used to demonstrate the potential impact of privacy literacy instruction.