Report Details Law Enforcement of Libraries
by Guest Blogger, 8/29/2005
The American Library Association (ALA) today released
complete findings from its survey measuring law enforcement activity in
America's libraries. Preliminary findings, released in June, revealed
that at least 137 legally executed requests by federal and state/local
law enforcement in both academic and public libraries have taken place
since October, 2001 - 63 legally executed requests for records in
public libraries and 74 such requests in academic libraries. The full
report of survey findings includes contextual data including responses
to interviews and an appendix containing the survey instrument.
Researchers developed a representative sample of more than 1,500 public
libraries, of which 33 percent responded to the survey. Of the 4,008
academic libraries invited to participate in the survey, 23 percent
responded.
The project was funded with support from the John L. and James S.
Knight Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ford
Foundation.
The study report can be found online at: http://www.ala.org/oitp.
