Draft for review. This notice describes what the library system actually does today, checked against its settings. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer or by the university's data protection officer, and it must be before publication.

Privacy notice

Yegates University Library keeps the smallest amount of information it can while still lending books and running a catalogue. This notice sets out exactly what is held, why, and what you can ask us to do about it.

What the library records about you

If you have a borrower account, the system holds:

• Your name, borrower category and the library you belong to
• Your borrower card number and, if you gave them, contact details
• Items you currently have on loan, and any reservations you have placed
• Any charges owed, and payments recorded against them
• Your borrowing history — the titles you have previously borrowed
• Your search history while you are signed in

If you are not signed in, searching the catalogue does not create a record against you.

Why

• To lend items and get them back. Loans, due dates, reservations and charges cannot work without a record of who has what.
• To let you see your own account — what you have out, what is due, what you have read before.
• To run the library. Counts of what is borrowed, by which faculty, tell us what to buy. These reports use totals, not named individuals.

Your borrowing and search history

Both are currently switched on. You can change that yourself: sign in, open your account › your privacy, and choose whether the library keeps a record of what you have borrowed. You may also clear your search history at any time from the Search history link at the top of the page.

Library staff can see your current loans, because they have to in order to check items in and out. Reading history is treated as confidential and is not shared outside the library.

Cookies

The catalogue sets one cookie that is genuinely necessary:

• Session cookie — keeps you signed in as you move between pages. It is deleted when you close your browser.

A second cookie remembers your language if you change it, and one records your answer to the cookie notice so you are not asked repeatedly.

There is no advertising, no analytics and no third-party tracking on this site. Nothing here reports your activity to anyone else.

Reading material from other publishers

Many items in this catalogue are open-access works held by others — arXiv, Project Gutenberg and academic journals. When you open one, the document is displayed inside our reader, but it is served to your browser by that publisher, not by us. Those publishers may set their own cookies and keep their own logs, governed by their policies rather than this one. We do not receive a record of what you read there.

If you would rather not appear in a publisher's logs, use the library's printed collection.

How long information is kept

• Current loans and reservations — until the item is returned and any charge settled
• Borrowing history — until you ask for it to be removed, or your borrower record is closed
• Borrower records — while you are a member of the university, plus a period afterwards for any outstanding items
• Backups — encrypted copies of the whole system are kept for thirty days and then deleted automatically

Who can see it

Library staff, limited to what their role requires: a desk assistant sees loans, a cataloguer does not see borrower accounts at all. Every change is recorded against the account that made it.

The university's registry may be told whether a graduating student has unreturned items or unpaid charges, as part of clearance. No reading history is shared for that purpose.

Your information is not sold, and is not passed to anyone outside the university except where the law requires it.

What you can ask for

• A copy of what the library holds about you
• Correction of anything inaccurate
• Deletion of your borrowing history
• An explanation of any record you do not recognise

Ask at the library desk or write to the Head Librarian. We will respond within one month.

Where the system runs

The library system runs on a server rented by the university, and encrypted backups are stored with a cloud provider. Both are located outside Nigeria. If that matters for your purposes, ask the Head Librarian and we will explain the arrangement in full.

Changes

If this notice changes materially we will say so on the catalogue's front page rather than altering it quietly.

Before publishing: confirm the retention periods against university policy, name the data protection officer and a contact address, and have this reviewed against the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 — particularly the sections on lawful basis, data subject rights and transfers outside Nigeria.