Privacy notice - Libraries
Southampton City Libraries – your data and privacy
When providing services, we need to take and store some data about you as our customer to make your transactions easier and make our service run smoothly.
We treat your data in the strictest confidence and only share your data if legally permitted to within current data protection legislation.
To join the library we ask you to provide the following information and some proof such as a bill:
- Your name
- Address
- Telephone number
- Date of birth
- Whether you have a disability
- Details of a guarantor if required
We record this information on our database called Spydus. We also record the following data:
- A record of your transactions with the library
- Computer usage
- Items you have on loan
- Monies you owe the library
- Payments and refunds and waived charges
- Comments and suggestions
- Notes and bans
- Personal preferences for communication
This information is held for the following purposes:
- Administration and audit
- Financial recording and debt recovery
- Monitoring and development of library services
- To enable notifications to you about items you need to return, books you have reserved and other service issues
We share data within Southampton City Council, and for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offences.
We keep your records as long as you are a member of the library.
If you have not used the library for two years and have no outstanding items on loan to you or owe us any money, your record will be deleted. However if you do still have items on loan or owe the library any money, your information will be kept for three years after your last activity.
You can check the basic information we hold about you on your account at any time. This is available on our online libraries service. You will need to have your library number which is on your library card and a PIN.
If any details are incorrect you may be able to amend them yourself or opt out of our communications.
To request full details of the information we hold about you please submit a subject access request.
For further information on data and Southampton City Council please see our privacy policy.
