PA 07-227—sHB 7290
Education Committee
Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee
Government Administration and Elections Committee
AN ACT CONCERNING PUBLIC LIBRARIES
SUMMARY: This act extends confidentiality requirements to cover more types of personally identifiable information maintained by libraries open to the public. It also updates laws governing the State Library, local public libraries, the State Library Board, and the state librarian. Among other things, it expands the State Library's collection of public documents to include electronic and digital documents, adjusts the authority of the State Library Board and the state librarian, and eliminates obsolete provisions and wording.
EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2007
§ 20 — CONFIDENTIALITY OF LIBRARY RECORDS
The act expands confidentiality requirements for library records. Prior law required public libraries to keep confidential any personally identifiable information contained in their circulation records and exempted such information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The act extends confidentiality and the FOIA exemption to any library record, regardless of format, that can be used to identify a library user or link a user to a library transaction. It bars a library from releasing the information to a third party without (1) a court order or (2) written permission from the library user. The act's confidentiality requirement applies to any library that is regularly open to the public, including public and private libraries; libraries maintained by industrial, commercial, or other associations or groups; and libraries maintained by state or local government agencies.
The confidentiality requirements do not apply to:
1. records maintained by school or higher education institution libraries;
2. records disclosed to a library's officers, employees, and agents in order to run the library; or
3. statistical reports regarding library registration and use of materials that do not contain personally identifying information.
§§ 3-5 — STATE PUBLICATIONS COLLECTION
The act expands the State Library's state publications collection to include state agency publications produced in electronic and other intangible formats. By law, the library must administer the collection, which under prior law included only publications printed or published by or under the direction of a state agency or other agency supported by state funds. The act refers to printed state publications as “tangible” publications and to electronic or digital publications as “intangible” ones.
The act expands the definition of state publications to include any document issued by a state agency that is available to the public. It expressly includes legislatively mandated reports and interoffice memos. It exempts only “routine,” rather than all, correspondence.
The act requires the State Library to provide permanent public access to the tangible publications collection and to a digital archive of the intangible publications. It requires state agencies to notify the State Library of the existence, availability, and location of intangible publications, when the agency publishes them. Agencies were already required to provide the library with copies of their tangible publications.
The act eliminates requirements that the State Library distribute two copies of each state publication to the Library of Congress and one copy to a designated national or regional research library. It makes the official indexed list of state publications, which the State Library must publish, an annual rather than a quarterly publication. It eliminates a requirement that the library distribute the list on request to other libraries, state agencies, and legislators.
§§ 17-19 — COPIES OF OFFICIAL LOCAL PUBLICATIONS
Under prior law, the State Library was required to keep files of official municipal publications for reference. The act instead requires the library to keep copies of the tangible municipal publications, which town, city, and borough clerks must already supply. It also requires the clerks to notify the library of the existence, availability, and location of any intangible publications, when they are published.
Town, city, and borough clerks must file copies of charters, charter amendments, ordinances, and home rule ordinances with the secretary of the state, the State Library, and various other law libraries. The act requires clerks to provide these documents in an electronic or digital form when they are published.
§ 10 — LIBRARY OPERATING GRANTS
The act makes statutes consistent by specifying that only principal public libraries receive annual state library operating grants. It repeals obsolete language phasing out grants for nonprincipal public libraries over three years from FY 1985 through FY 1987. Principal public libraries are designated as such by local municipal governing boards.
By law, libraries must certify that operating grants are used for library purposes. The act prohibits any part of the grant from reverting to the towns the libraries normally serve.
The act expands the requirement that principal public libraries provide free services to residents of their towns by specifying that they must not only provide free access to library materials but also free loans of library materials and free access to information, advice, help, and literacy promotion programs.
Finally, the act updates population factors in the operating grant formula by eliminating explicit references to the 1980 Census.
§1 — STATE LIBRARY BOARD
The act eliminates a requirement that the State Library Board report to the General Assembly every two years. It also allows members of the board's Advisory Council for Library Planning and Development to be reappointed for additional two-year terms after serving two consecutive terms and taking at least a one-year break in service. Under prior law, the board could reappoint advisory council members only once and members could serve for no more than four years.
§§ 2 & 8 — STATE LIBRARIAN
The act allows the state librarian to make contracts to help the librarian perform his or her duties, without the State Library Board's approval. The contracts are subject to the attorney general's approval and must be within available appropriations or public or private funds.
It eliminates:
1. requirements that the State Library Board approve the state librarian's staff appointments and book and library material purchases for the State Library;
2. the state librarian's responsibility to help local public libraries select books; and
3. the state librarian's authority to (a) buy and arrange for loans of pictures and books to public libraries, schools, and similar organizations he selects and the State Library Board approves, and (b) advise and assist libraries in the state's charitable and correctional institutions, according to rules established by the institutions' directors.
§§6-8, 11-16, 21-23 — LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY DIRECTORS AND TRUSTEES
Prior law referred to the governing boards of local public libraries as either directors or trustees and to each library's administrative head as the librarian or director. The act eliminates the alternative names for each position by designating the members of library governing boards as “trustees” and the administrative heads as “library directors,” thus eliminating statutory confusion between local librarians and the state librarian and library directors and library boards of directors.
§ 7 — TOWN RECORDS
The act eliminates a statute that explicitly authorizes town clerks to deposit any books in their custody, other than records, in the local public library.
§ 9 — LIBRARY SERVICE CENTER ADVISORY BOARDS
The act eliminates the authority of local library boards and boards of education to designate representatives to serve on the advisory board for the library service center where the library or schools are located. The advisory boards are obsolete.
§ 24 — STATE LIBRARY BOARD CERTIFICATES
The act repeals a law allowing the State Library Board to award certificates to librarians in Connecticut public libraries, according to regulations it establishes.
OLR Tracking: JSL: KM: PF: RO