Personal Data Collection Practices

The library provides some services using third-party online tools. As a result, we and the vendors of these tools collect and retain data about you. We work to ensure that your data is stored securely, avoid creating unnecessary records, and ensure that contracts and licenses with vendors reflect library policies and legal obligations concerning privacy.

Borrowing

We retain a record of items you currently have checked out. We do not retain records of past loans, but in order to find lost items, our tool retains a circulation history of those items.

We import account information from Banner. Banner is the college’s system for student, financial, and personnel data. From this, we permanently retain your:

  • name;
  • home address;
  • phone number;
  • Wheaton email address;
  • class year; and
  • Wheaton ID number.

Once you are no longer a current faculty, staff, or student at Wheaton, you may request that we delete your personal information.

OCLC, Inc. provides the software that we use to manage our collection, including storing user information. 

Interlibrary loan

We retain interlibrary loan information for six months. This information includes your name, ID number/barcode, email address, and requested items. This allows the lending library to close the transaction.

Once you are no longer a current faculty, staff, or student at Wheaton, you may ask us to delete your personal information.

OCLC, Inc. provides the software that we use for interlibrary loan.

Using online library materials

Online content providers require us to limit access to members of the Wheaton community. We use Duo, administered by Cisco, to prove your Wheaton identity. This service permanently retains your IP address and the URL of the resource you accessed. We can access this data if a provider alerts us to a problem.

Some providers require you to create a personal login to access certain features. These are not governed by our privacy and confidentiality policy. We recommend you review these providers’ privacy policies.

We collect and store information about the pages you visit on our website. We use this information to make improvements to the website. We do not routinely delete this information.

Getting help from library staff

We collect certain information in order to provide you with support:

  • Meetings scheduled via our website: Our meeting scheduling tool collects and stores your name, email address, and type of help you request via email and Google Calendar;
  • Chat: You can use chat anonymously or can choose to provide your name and email, which our chat tool collects and stores along with the transcript of the chat; and
  • Email: Email conversations with us are handled in accordance with the College’s Email Policy and Email Retention Policy, which can be accessed via the Information Oversight Committee (IOC) Overview page on insideWheaton.

We also record anonymous data of all of these interactions to help us assess services. 

We do not routinely delete any of this information.

Reserving rooms in the Library

Our online room scheduling tool does not retain reservations or the information you provide on the form after the time of the reservation has passed.

Rooms reserved through email communications are handled in accordance with the College’s Email Policy and Email Retention Policy, which can be accessed via the Information Oversight Committee (IOC) Overview page on insideWheaton.

Wheaton College OpenPress

We administer Wheaton College OpenPress, which uses BookOven’s Pressbooks platform via Reclaim Hosting’s Domain of One’s Own platform. When you sign up for an account, your name and email address are required to create and maintain your account. We do not routinely delete this information. 

Canvas Learning Management System

We administer Wheaton’s use of Instructure’s Canvas platform. Activities on Canvas, including some communications, assignment submissions, and grades are governed by The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99), which protects the privacy of student’s educational records.

This policy was last reviewed October 19, 2026.