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Privacy Notice - Oldham Heritage, LIbraries and Arts

Privacy Notice - Oldham Heritage, LIbraries and Arts

What this privacy notice is for

Our core data protection obligations and commitments are set out in the council’s primary privacy notice at: 

This notice provides additional privacy information for:

  • Library Customers
  • Digital Gifting data package applicants

What we use your information for

We collect your personal information and may use it for the following purpose(s):

  • Create your library account so you can use our library facilities
  • Assign you an appropriate borrower category
  • Contact you with information relating to your account
  • Process payments for services that incur a fee
  • Record access to Wi-fi and our public computers
  • To operate our Tablet Loan and Digital Gifting schemes
  • Keep and maintain library membership records
  • To inform the service and/or other services within the council when purchasing items, investing in the libraries’ infrastructure, planning of events and to assist in the development of an individuals’ education
  • To carry out statistical analysis for monitoring and improvement
  • To contact you about events and activities taking place in libraries we feel may be of interest to you

What categories of information we use

Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when linked with other information, allows a person to be uniquely identified. For example, this could be your name and contact details.

The law treats some types of personal information as ‘special category’ and/or ‘sensitive’ data where the information requires more protection due to its specific nature.

Information is considered special category and/or sensitive when it relates to:

  • Racial or ethnic origin
  • Sexual orientation and/or sexual life
  • Religious and/or philosophical beliefs
  • Trade union membership
  • Political opinions
  • Genetic and/or bio-metric
  • Physical and/or mental health
  • Criminal convictions and offences

In order to carry out any of the purposes listed above we obtain and process the following personal information:

Personal Data

  • Personal details including your name, home address, date of birth/age, telephone number/s and email address/es
  • For children’s accounts we also collect parent/carer/guarantor details and school attended details
  • Records of items that you have borrowed, returned and renewed
  • Financial information

Sensitive/Special Category personal data

  • Racial or ethnic origin
  • Physical and/or mental health needs

We will only collect and use the minimum amount of personal information required when delivering our services.

Legal basis for processing

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us by you. Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for using your personal information are:

  • You gave us your consent - UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(a)
  • You have entered into a contract with us – UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(b)
  • We need it to perform a public task - UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(e)
  • We have a legitimate interest - UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(f)

When we also collect data that is considered ‘special category’ we further rely on the following lawful bases:

  • You gave us your explicit consent - UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (a)
  • We need to collect it for Substantial Public Interest in order to comply with UK legislation - UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (g)
  • We need to analyse your information - UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (j)

The primary legislation which we rely on to ensure Oldham Libraries complies with its legal obligations and functions includes but is not limited to:

  • Public Libraries and Museum Act 1964 - local authorities are required to provide a Library Service. To deliver and effectively manage this public task it is necessary to collect and process your personal data.
  • Equality Act 2010

Information sharing/recipients

Your personal information will be held on our electronic library management system which will be made available to our library staff who need it to manage your account and carry out their duties and responsibilities for Oldham Libraries.

It may also be shared internally within other business areas of Oldham Council where appropriate, for example: our Education department to assist with reading development of children.

To assist with our day-to-day service, Oldham Libraries also makes use of third-party providers to perform functions and provide services on our behalf, for example: operation of our self-service kiosks, public computer booking systems and apps on our tablet devices.

The third-party providers we commission are data processors and may use your personal information to assist the library service or to provide an agreed service to you on our behalf.

All of our third-party providers are bound by strict contractual terms in order to ensure that your personal information is protected appropriately.

Being a member of Oldham Libraries will enable you to access a service by other third-party providers, for example: eBooks, online databases. You will need to set up an account with them to access these services.

You can access these third-party provider’s Privacy Notices for information about how they use your data.

We will not normally share your information with organisations other than our partner organisations without your consent; however, there may be certain circumstances where we would share without consent such as where we are required to do so by law to:

  • safeguard the public
  • when somebody may be at risk, harm or in emergency situations
  • prevention and detection of crime and also fraud
  • for the purposes of providing a service to you under a contract

Any information which is shared will only be shared on a ‘need to know basis’ with appropriate individuals. Only the minimum information for the purpose it is sought will be shared.

Data Transfers beyond European Economic Area

We do not transfer any of your personal information outside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’)

Automated Decisions

All the decisions we make about you involve human intervention

How long we keep your data

We will only keep your personal information for as long as the law specifies or where the law does not specify this, for the length of time determined by our business requirements.

We delete inactive borrowers from our system after 2 years if you have no loans and/or fines outstanding on your account.

We delete inactive borrowers from our system after 5 years if you have loans and/or fines still owed on your account.

We delete your personal data under the Digital Gifting data package scheme after 2 years.

All loan tablet devices are erased of personal data when returned to the library.

If you wish to have your library account deleted from the library system then email: 

Alternatively, you can ring 0161 770 8000 and the request can be placed via the Contact Centre - please note that a request of this type could take up to 10 working days to process.

If you use your Oldham library card in another authorities’ library under the Greater Manchester Shared Library Services Initiative, then in order to exercise any of your rights under the UK GDPR you will be required to contact each respective council, where your library card has been used.

Where can I get advice

More information on how to seek advice in order to exercise your data protection rights, raise a concern or complain about the handling of your personal information by the council can be found in the council’s privacy notice which can be found at: 

Updating our privacy notices

We may update or revise our privacy notices at any time so please refer to the version published on our website for the most up to date details.