SCONUL Privacy Policy

Introduction
SCONUL is committed to protecting your privacy. The information you share with us means you will be able to use the services we offer. We only collect the information that is necessary to carry out our business, provide the particular service you have requested and to keep you informed. Our privacy policy gives you details on when and why we collect your personal data and how we use it.

Collection of your personal information
The amount and type of information we collect from you depends on the nature of the interaction you have with us. For example, we ask visitors who wish to use the SCONUL Access scheme to provide their name, email address and Library ID number. In each case, we only gather as much information as is necessary to fulfil the service request. But in general we collect the following personal information:

  • contact information including: home or work address, telephone number and email address
  • affiliation and role
  • bank details if appropriate.

Information about your computer hardware and software is automatically collected by SCONUL. This information can include your: IP address; browser type; domain name; access times; and referring website addresses.

How we use your Personal Information
The information we collect and hold on you will be used in a number of ways, including:

  • to fulfil membership requests
  • to fulfil bookings for attendance at events
  • provision of a SCONUL service, e.g. the SCONUL Access Scheme or mentor scheme
  • provision of information to inform you of other products or services available from SCONUL and its affiliates
  • process payments, e.g. fees for attendance at events, payment of invoices, etc.
  • to facilitate discussion and sharing of knowledge through discussion lists and events
  • to contact you to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered
  • when you use the SCONUL website.

SCONUL will keep your information only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice and to fulfil our legal obligations. We will not keep more information than we need. The retention period will vary according to the purpose the data is collated.

SCONUL does not sell, rent or lease its customer lists to third parties. SCONUL may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party. In addition, SCONUL may share data with trusted partners to help us process payments, perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to SCONUL, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

SCONUL does not use or disclose sensitive personal information, such as race, religion, or political affiliations, without your explicit consent.

SCONUL will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on SCONUL or the site; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of SCONUL; and, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of SCONUL, or the public.

Security of your personal information
SCONUL discloses personally-identifying information to its employees, contractors and affiliates in order to provide services available from SCONUL. Payment processing and the Jiscmail service are good examples of this. They will not use your data for anything other than the clearly defined purpose relating to the service that they are providing.

Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through SCONUL public message boards, this information may be collected and used by others. Note: SCONUL does not read any of your private online communications.

SCONUL secures your personal information from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. SCONUL secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. When personal information (such as a credit card number) is transmitted to other websites, it is protected through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.

Third party services
SCONUL utilises third party services to assist in the delivery of some of our services, e.g. Jiscmail, Fikket, Eventbrite, SurveyMonkey and Paypal. When you interact with these sites you may provide information about yourself to those third parties. SCONUL is not responsible for how they collect, use and share your information. We encourage you to review the privacy statements of the websites you choose to link to from SCONUL, so that you can understand how these websites collect, use and share your information.

Updating your personal information
SCONUL will endeavour to ensure the data we hold on you is correct and up-to-date. If you wish us to amend or remove the personal information we hold on you, please contact us by email or write to us. We will correct any inaccuracies or remove you from our databases as soon as practicable.

For the SCONUL Access scheme, institutional members are required to nominate individuals as their primary contact. If you are nominated, we will use information your personal information to provide the service to your organisation. You may request your information be removed, however we may require your organisation to provide a replacement contact before we remove you. We will correct any inaccuracies personal information as soon as practicable.

Website visitors
Like most websites, SCONUL collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. We do this to maintain quality of the service, to determine what SCONUL services are the most popular and to provide general statistics regarding use of the SCONUL website. The data may be gathered from our website hosts and Google Analytics.

Use of Cookies
The SCONUL website uses 'cookies' to help you personalise your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalise SCONUL pages, or register with SCONUL site or services, a cookie helps SCONUL to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same SCONUL website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the SCONUL features that you customised.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the SCONUL services or websites you visit.

Changes to this statement
SCONUL will occasionally update this Statement of Privacy to reflect user feedback. SCONUL encourages you to periodically review this statement to be informed of how SCONUL is protecting your information.

This statement was last updated on 14th May 2018.

Contact Information
SCONUL welcomes your comments regarding this Statement of Privacy. If you believe that SCONUL has not adhered to this statement, please contact SCONUL using the form on the website. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem.