How we process and protect your personal information.
The Libraries Alliance website is currently administered by Libraries Connected. Its privacy policy is therefore governed by that of Libraries Connected.
Libraries Connected respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website at https://www.librariesconnected.org.uk/ (“our website”) (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. This privacy policy also applies to any personal data collected or received through means other than our website – for example via email, telephone, post or face-to-face contact.
This privacy policy aims to give you information on how Libraries Connected collects and processes your personal data, including any data you may provide when (if applicable) you sign up to one or more newsletters or mailing lists, obtain a product or service, take part in a competition or survey or otherwise engage with us.
Our website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children. If you are below 16 you must stop using our website unless you have our express written consent to use it.
It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements any such notices and is not intended to override them.
Libraries Connected is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “Libraries Connected”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).
We have appointed a Privacy Manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights (as set out in paragraph 9 of this privacy policy), please contact the Privacy Manager using the details set out below.
Our full details are:
Full name of legal entity: Libraries Connected (charity number 1176482)
Name and title of Privacy Manager: Isobel Hunter, CEO
Email address: isobel.hunter@librariesconnected.org.uk
Postal address:
Mailbox 1201
Maggie O’Neill Business and Training Centre
433 Liverpool Road
Huyton
Liverpool L36 8HT
Telephone number: 020 33701 2306
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
This version was last updated on 1 March 2021.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy/notice of every website you visit.
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together follows:
We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.
We do not routinely collect Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). We may however collect certain special categories of special data where relevant to a project on which you are involved, with your explicit consent. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us, but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
Direct interactions. You may give us your personal data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise, including face-to-face contact. This includes personal data you provide when you:
Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see our cookie policy at paragraph 10 for further details.
Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
(a) analytics providers such as Google, some of whom are based outside the EEA;
(b) advertising networks, some of whom are based outside the EEA; and
(c) search information providers, some of whom are based outside the EEA.
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan (or may in the future plan) to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.
Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.
| Purpose/Activity | Type of data | Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest |
|---|---|---|
| To register you as a new member or service user, potential award winner, or potential recipient of funding/bursaries or project participant | (a) Identity & Contact (b) Services | (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) As necessary for our legitimate interests (including to perform our tasks and/or services) |
To process and deliver your services including: (a) Manage payments, fees and charges (b) Collect and recover money owed to us | (a) Identity & Contact (b) Services (c) Financial (d) Usage | (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (including to recover debts due to us) |
To manage our relationship with you which will include: (a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey | (a) Identity & Contact
| (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services) |
| To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey | (a) Identity & Contact (b) Usage
| (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business) |
| To administer and protect our business and our website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) | (a) Identity & Contact (b) Usage (c) Technical | (a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise) (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
| To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you, use data analytics and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you | (a) Identity & Contact (b) Usage (c) Technical | Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our business strategy) |
| To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you | (a) Identity & Contact (b) Usage (c) Technical | Consent |
We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. It is entirely your choice whether you consent to us providing you with direct electronic marketing – we will only do so where you have given us your consent to do so.
We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).
You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us or if you provided us with your details when you entered a competition or registered for a promotion and, in each case, you have opted in to receiving that marketing.
We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.
You can ask us to stop (and to ask third parties to whom we have provided your personal data to stop) sending you marketing messages by contacting us at any time.
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
We may transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission.
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe.
Where none of the above apply, we will ask you to specifically consent to the transfer.
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our data retention policy which you can request from us by contacting us.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.
If you wish to exercise any of those rights (as further detailed in the Glossary), please contact us.
You will not usually have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.