The Privacy Literacy Field Guide

Answering a need for practical and theory-informed approaches to privacy literacy practices, The Privacy Literacy Field Guide responds to the challenges that practitioners experience.

By offering privacy literacy programming, libraries can broaden and enhance their impact in an emerging area of societal importance, while leveraging librarians’ unique expertise in data flows and ethical commitment to privacy.

The Privacy Literacy Field Guide provides a roadmap for academic librarians to navigate the rapidly evolving information ecosystem, build professional self-efficacy, and implement privacy literacy learning experiences into instructional, student engagement, and outreach programming.

Arranged in three sections, this volume supports librarians in establishing professional privacy knowledge, designing privacy literacy learning experiences, and implementing privacy literacy in their instruction, outreach, and engagement work. The foundations section delivers an introduction to privacy theory, guides readers in the development of a personal privacy current awareness action plan, and discusses pedagogical and learning design considerations—including a chapter on how not to teach privacy literacy. The approaches section reviews contemporary topical approaches to privacy literacy instruction informed by the authors’ award-winning privacy workshop series, introducing learning experiences for the digital footprint, digital professionalism and digital citizenship, digital wellness, algorithmic literacy, generative AI, and privacy and social justice. The applications section delivers practical advice on developing privacy literacy programming, collaborating with campus and external partners, and assessing and advocating for privacy literacy work. Each chapter concludes with reflection questions, activities, and supplemental resources to support readers in applying concepts to their work.