March 2025 National Forum on Privacy Literacy Standards aided by $100,000 grant

Proceedings to be held at Penn State, hosted by University faculty team, with assistance from a two-year Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant; call for participants now open
three vertical portraits of smiling women

National Forum on Privacy Literacy Standards project team members are, from left, faculty librarians Alexandria Chisholm and Sarah Hartman-Caverly, reference and instruction librarians at Berks Thun Library at Penn State Berks, and Priya Kumar, PNC Career Development Assistant Professor, College of Information Sciences and Technology.

Credit: Penn State University Libraries (2), College of Information Sciences and Technology

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A project team representing Penn State University Libraries and Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology has received a two-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grant totaling $104,771 to create and host a National Forum for Privacy Literacy Standards and Competencies. The forum will be held March 10-11, 2025, at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center and online. 

This national forum aims to address a primary responsibility of library workers who serve a variety of constituencies, including youth and family, K-12 schools and higher education. Article VII of the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, last updated in 2019, states that “Libraries should advocate for, educate about and protect people’s privacy.”  

The project team includes Penn State faculty librarians Sarah Hartman-Caverly and Alexandria Chisholm, both reference and instruction librarians based at the Berks Thun Library at Penn State Berks, and Priya Kumar, PNC Career Development Assistant Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. Project team members Hartman-Caverly and Chisholm are also co-editors of the book “Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries: Theories, Methods and Cases” (ACRL Publishing, 2023).  

“Our research shows a real need among library workers for practical frameworks to guide their privacy education work, and we know privacy-related theory has a lot to offer practitioners as well. This IMLS National Leadership Grant enables us to convene experts and thought leaders on privacy issues and privacy teaching, to work together on improving privacy education for children, teens and young adults,” Hartman-Caverly, project director, said. “Privacy education is an emerging role for library workers that addresses real challenges facing the communities we serve, including surveillance, algorithmic bias and automated censorship. The national forum will create resources for library workers that advance the practice of privacy literacy and position it as a library initiative deserving of planning, staffing, and other resources.” 

In addition to its aim of developing consensus national standards and competencies for privacy literacy education in libraries across the K-20 educational spectrum, the project team plans to publish forum proceedings, a practitioner self-study guide and an action handbook for implementing the standards and competencies. Project results will be open-licensed and freely accessible online. 

The forum will welcome experts and practitioners of privacy literacy in public, school and academic library contexts, and also will focus discussion on the development, implementation, assessment and staffing of privacy literacy efforts. 

A call for participants is open through Dec. 1, 2024. Additional information about the National Forum for Privacy Literacy Standards and Competencies is available at the project website