> Have any of you had experience with this: a faculty member who suspects
> a student is plagiarizing asks about items he has borrowed on interli-
> brary loan. Confidentiality dictates that we do not supply that infor-
> mation. Teaching students about the liability asssociated with plagiar-
> ism suggests we help the faculty member catch the culprit. I tend to
> favor the confidentiality side. Other opinions? Anne Maio, University
> of Hartford (Maio@Hartford.Bitnet)
We had a similar case two weeks ago in the engineering library where I
work. In this case, however, a faculty member suspected that the student
had plagiarized a book that our library owned. The book was checked out
and he asked that we tell him who had the book checked out. I politely
told his secretary that it was against our policy, etc. She called back,
obviously after speaking to her boss, and said that the student was
scheduled to graduate and did that change our policy. I stated that we had
to protect the privacy of all our patrons, whether students or faculty.
They also wanted to know if we had a policy that all books had to be
returned before someone could graduate (we don't anymore; apparently it was
too much of a hassle). In our case a copy of the book was also available
in an affiliated library approximately 8 blocks away where the professor
could have gone to get the book.
This was my first encounter with this situation. Perhaps I was a bit
naive, but I was rather shocked that they would ask us to divulge that
kind of information. At this particular university (which is not Pitt
BTW), I sometimes feel that faculty members feel they have certain
rights and/or privileges beyond accepted library procedure. IMHO, this
situation is an issue between professor and student.
Our role in that situation was only to protect the privacy of the patron
checking out the book. We cannot be involved with what patrons do with
books they check out from our library; or more correctly stated, with the
information contained in those books.
Chris
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