San Mateo County Library Privacy Policy

The San Mateo County Library values you as a customer and takes your personal privacy seriously. This Privacy Policy describes information we may collect and explains how we use the personal information we collect from you. Please read the following to understand our views and practices regarding personal information, and how they pertain to you as you use the features on our web site.

This statement discloses the current privacy practice. If we make any substantive changes to this policy, we will announce it on our site. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we prominently post such changes prior to implementing them.

Information We May Collect

When you visit the web site, we collect and store only information to measure the number of visitors to different areas of the site to assist us in making the site more useful to you. The information includes:

• The address (IP) of your computer or Internet provider
• The date and time you accessed our site
• The Internet address of the web site that referred you to our site

Web site data is separate from individual library account data. We cannot look up your library record to determine what web sites you have visited.

How We Use Information About You

We ask visitors to our site to provide their name, email address, postal address and/or telephone number, library card number or PIN (personal identification number) only if needed to access a specified service such as external databases or your library record. We also request this information to assist in answering inquiries, providing information, participating in a contest, or shipping requested materials and products. These requests can be found on our library card registration form, our email notification form, our email reference form and other forms as necessary to providing the related service.

The Information sent to us through our online forms is not considered sensitive information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, and is therefore not secured with encryption. If you feel uncomfortable submitting any information through our web site, you may contact any one of our libraries and speak with a live person during open hours.

We will not sell, lease or otherwise distribute or disclose your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, borrower records or other personal information for non-library purposes to outside parties unless required by law.

From time to time, we conduct promotional campaigns to inform the community of our services. At such times we may use selected comments from members of the community to help describe our services. If we use your comments as collected in our feedback forms, they will be quoted anonymously and will in no way disclose who you are or any other personal information unless we secure your permission.

Cookies

At this time our web site does NOT use cookies. Cookies are small data files that certain web sites write to your hard drive. A cookie can only contain personal information volunteered by you such as user identifications or passwords. A cookie cannot read data from your hard drive or read cookie files created by other sites. If you prefer not to receive cookies, you can set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies or refuse the cookie when your browser alerts you to its presence. You can also refuse all cookies by making the appropriate setting in your browser.

What Else Should You Know?

Our web site contains links to external web sites not maintained by the San Mateo County Library. We cannot be responsible for your privacy when you visit outside web sites. Please consult the privacy policies of those web sites should you have questions regarding their use.