At Lean Library, we put honesty and transparency at the heart of everything we do. Here are our answers to frequently asked questions regarding privacy.
If your questions are not listed here, please get in touch with us and let us know.
Frequently asked questions from end-users:
Q:
Why does the extension require access to the information within all windows and tabs? Does the extension obtain my sensitive information including my passwords, phone numbers, or credit card numbers?
A:
We can assure you that we do not collect any personal data. With some of our core features (eBook Alternatives, Article Alternatives, Highlight and Search), our extension does require a few details to provide you with a seamless service.
In order to function, the extension needs to scrape the page for academic material IDs (like ISBN and DOI), and based on this information you get redirected to a full-text location. We use highly advanced regular expressions when scraping the pages to make sure our extension only picks up DOIs and ISBNs.
Q:
What data does my university collect from me using the extension?
A: Neither Lean Library nor your institute will hold or have access to any personal data on your browsing history. The only statistics we have is the breakdown of the usage of different features provided by Lean Library collectively as an institute. For example, how many active users, how many people have subscribed to ToC (Table of Content) alert, or the usage ratio of web browsers. These data will help the dashboard administrator to understand what services are most needed for the end-users and improve their service accordingly. There is no data stored at a personally identifiable level as to what websites have been visited (though summative information is available at the institute level) or any personal details.
Q:
Do you track any Web Analytics?
A:
_We use Google Analytics to track overall usage for product improvements. We don’t work with any Personally Identifiable Information.
Frequently asked questions from Librarians/Administrators:
Q:
Will you have access to any confidential library data via the Link Resolver integrations?
A:
We do not have access to your data other than the Holdings Information (licensed locations of articles & eBooks) you provide us. Even the holdings information is queried with an Open URL request and your link resolver provides us the data in return. Please see an example XML response we get from link resolvers here.
Q:
How does the extension detect information of a webpage?
A:
The extension picks up the DOI or ISBN from the webpage, and it will send the webpage URL to our server to recognise what action is needed / not needed to happen. As all of the Alternatives and Access data is stored on the server, it’s more efficient to pass the webpage URL to the server and then pass it back to the extension.
We have a list of “blocked” domains that the extension knows about, that when a user arrives on one of them, then the extension will not check for any actions. This is typically to reduce calls back to server but also increases that anonymity. Examples here include social media platforms.
Q:
Does Lean Library have access to our users' IP addresses? If not, how do you know if our users are on or off-campus?
A: No, we do not have access to the users' IP addresses. The Lean Library browser extension will run an IP check against the institute/university's IP addresses when the user is on one of your access domains. The extension will check if the user is on or off-campus to show an appropriate pop-up. This information will not be forwarded or logged to our servers.
Q:
Do we have specific GDPR guidelines?
A:
_We do not gather personally identifiable information about our patrons and their usage and will not market to patrons directly. We adhere to GDPR guidelines. For librarians, as part of signing up for our service, we will automatically add you to our mailing list which will alert you to service outages, and new features. For this, we use your name and email address provided at registration and you can decide to opt out at any time from the email footer unsubscribe link.
Q:
As a Library Admin, what data do you store about me?
A:
_We do not hold any data from the Library Admin apart from your name and login email address. We will also be rolling out 2-Factor Authentication to increase the security without storing any additional information from you.
Q:
Does the extension cache any university or user data?
A:
The extension caches only as much as a web browser generally does in terms of data it brings in from the Lean Library app. We don’t store any user data anywhere apart from a unique and randomly generated identifier, which is for the purpose of gathering statistical data on how the extension is being used. This is then fed back to the university for their reference.