Privacy Policy

Libraries Without Borders (LWB) complies with the requirements for privacy and security established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This page outlines our privacy and security policy as they apply to our sites as well as third party sites and applications that LWB uses (for example, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn).

Your Visit to the LWB Websites

Your visit to the LWB websites is private and secure. When you visit the LWB websites, we do not collect any personally identifiable information (PII) about you, unless you choose to explicitly provide it to us. We do, however, collect some data about your visit to our website to help us better understand public use of the site and to make it more useful to visitors. This page describes the information that is automatically collected and stored. LWB never collects information for commercial marketing or any purposes not related to LWB’s functions.

What Type of Information LWB Collects

When you visit any website, certain information about your visit can be collected. LWB automatically collects and stores the following type of information about your visit: 

 

  • The name of the domain you use to access the Internet (for example, verizon.com, if you are using a Verizon online account, or stanford.edu, if you are connecting from Stanford University’s domain)

  • The date and time of your visit to our website 

  • The pages and documents you viewed on our website from an external search engine such as Bing or Google 

  • The URL of the website you visited prior to ours

  • The words you searched for on our website 

  • The type and version of your Web browser and operating system

  • Your location at the time of your visit, down to city-level, and  

  • Your age, gender, and language at the time of your visit to our website

 

This information is used to measure the number of visitors to the various sections of our site and improve organization, coverage, system performance or other problem areas. This information is not used for associating search terms or patterns of site navigation with individual users. When search features offer suggested terms, these suggestions are based on aggregated data only. LWB periodically deletes its web logs. On occasion, LWB may provide aggregated information to third party entities it contracts with for the purpose of research analysis. Aggregated data cannot be linked back to an individual user. 

 

 

Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

You do not need to give us personal information to visit the LWB website. 


If you choose to send us personal information by email, or by filling out a form on our website, we use this information to respond to your message and to help us provide you with the information or material you requested. 


Third-party contractors employed by LWB may have access to this information in order to provide a response to your question or comment. These contractors are held to the same standard to safeguard the information and provide the same level of privacy protection as guaranteed by LWB.


The survey responses and questions that are sent to us may be used to improve our programming and content.


Disclosure 

LWB does not give, share, sell, or transfer any personal information about our visitors, unless required by law enforcement or statute.  


Links from LWB to Other Websites

Some LWB web pages provide links to other Internet sites that provide further information and resources. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy policy of the new site. 


Visiting an Official LWB Page on Third- Party Websites

LWB maintains accounts on third-party websites, such as social media sites, as tools to better interact with the public. The security and privacy policies of third-party websites apply to your activity on those sites. Users of third-party websites often share information with the general public, user community, and/or the third-party operating the website. You should review the privacy policies of all websites before using them and ensure that you understand how your information may be used. You should also adjust privacy settings of your account for any third-party website to match your preferences. 


LWB Accounts 

Common third-party website privacy policies used by LWB include but are not limited to: 


How LWB Collects and Uses Information from Third-Party Websites 

If you have an account/profile with a third-party website, and choose to follow, like, friend, or comment on a third-party website managed by LWB, certain personal information associated with your account may be made available to us based on the privacy policies of the third-party website and your privacy settings within that website. We do not share personally identifiable information made available through these websites. 


LWB sometimes collects and uses the information made available through third-party websites. 


Google Analytics

When you browse through the LWB websites, we use Google Analytics software to gather and temporarily store a variety of information about your visit. However, this information cannot be used to identify you as an individual. 


We do not associate any of the data we collect with you as an individual. Instead, we aggregate this data from all visits in order to improve our website and provide a better user experience to our visitors. The aggregate data is available only to LWB web managers and other designated staff who require this information to perform their duties. It is retained only for as long as needed for proper analysis. The Google Analytics Privacy Policy is available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/


LWB visitors can opt-out of the Google Analytics Advertising Features we use, such as the Demographics and Interest Reports, by downloading and installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. In doing so, LWB visitors prevent their data from being used by Google Analytics. 


Demographic and Interest Data

On some portions of our website we have enabled Google Analytics and other third-party software (listed below), to provide aggregate demographic and interest data of our visitors. This information cannot be used to identify you as an individual. 


Web Measurement and Customization Tools 

LWB uses the specified software and features below: 


Bit.ly: LWB uses Bit.ly to shorten long URLs for use in email and social media messages. 


  • Bit.ly provides analytics on how many people clicked on the URLs distributed by LWB. Bit.ly analytics does not provide any personally identifiable information about the visitors who click the shortened links. The Bit.ly Privacy Policy is available at https://bitly.com/pages/privacy


Security

LWB maintains this site. For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, we use software programs to monitor traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. In the event of authorized law enforcement investigations, and pursuant to any required legal process, information from LWB web logs may be used to help identify an individual. 


Last Reviewed: August 27, 2020