Websites, Social Media, and Privacy Policy

BOARD POLICY

Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD) utilizes its websites and social media platforms to connect with its patrons by informing them of Library services and providing a forum for public feedback. All such sites will have prior authorization from PPLD’s Communications Office to act as official PPLD sites and will be branded in accordance with PPLD standards.

PPLD recognizes and respects differences in opinion. Comments, posts, and messages are welcome and will be reviewed. Content deemed inappropriate may be removed. However, PPLD is not obligated to take any such actions, and will not be responsible or liable for content posted by users of our sites or social media platforms.

PROCEDURES

  1. Guidelines: Inappropriate Content

    The following will be considered inappropriate:

    1. Obscene content
    2. Offensive terms that target specific individuals or groups, including terms whose use would violate PPLD’s nondiscrimination policies
    3. Personal attacks, insults, or threatening language
    4. Potentially libelous statements
    5. Plagiarized material
    6. Private, personal information published without consent
    7. Comments totally unrelated to the content of the forum
    8. Photos and hyperlinks to material that are not directly related to the discussion
    9. Commercial promotions, spam, political campaigning or lobbying, or proselytizing
    10. Fraudulence, including impersonating someone else or misrepresentations
    11. Anything that violates laws or Library policies
  2. Privacy Information

    The Library takes very seriously the issue of patron privacy. We ask all patrons, especially minors, using services on our website or on websites affiliated with the Library to limit the amount of personal information they provide. We do not ask for more personal information from children than is necessary to participate, and we encourage parents and caregivers to tell their children about the importance of (i) not revealing personal information online and (ii) asking for permission before giving their last name or personal information to any website.

  3. Third-Party Vendor Services

    PPLD enters into agreements with third parties to provide online services, digital collections, and streaming media content, as well as to improve our website. When using some of these services, you may also connect with social networks and other users of these services.

    Third-party services may gather and disclose your information, including:

    1. Personally identifiable (PI) information you knowingly provide, including when you register for the site, provide feedback and suggestions, request information, or create shared content;
    2. Other information that could be used to identify you, such as your IP address, search history, location-based data, and device ID;
    3. Non-personally identifiable information, such as your ad views, analytics, browser information (type and language), cookie data, date/time of your request, demographic data, hardware/software type, interaction data, serving domains, pageviews and the web page you have visited immediately prior to visiting the site; and
    4. Other data that third-party services may collect as described in the vendor’s privacy policy and terms of use.

    For more information on these services and the specific types of data that may be gathered and disclosed by each service, please refer to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policies for the services you use. You may choose to not use these third-party services if you do not accept their Terms of Use and Privacy Policies; please read them carefully. In cases where patrons leave the Library's website to visit one of its partners' websites, patrons are encouraged to learn about the privacy policies of the websites they visit.

  4. Cookies

    A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer, mobile phone, or device browser from a website's computer and is stored on your device's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser preferences are set to allow it. Many websites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows. Websites also use cookies to customize your user experience to your preferences.
    The Library uses cookies to verify that you are an authorized user in order to allow access to licensed Library resources, to customize web pages for your use, to help make our site more useful to visitors, and to learn about the number of visitors to our site and the types of technology our visitors use.
    Some of the applications or external sites that you may link to from our pages, devices, or equipment also use cookies. For more information on the use of cookies by each service, please refer to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policies for the services you use. You may set the preferences in your web browser to refuse cookies or to tell you when a cookie is being sent. This may result in an inability to access some Library services from computers outside the Library.

Please direct inquiries about this policy to PPLD’s Communications Office.

Approved by the Board of Trustees 7/9/19; Procedural Updates by Management 6/11/20