View/Open - JUWEL - Forschungszentrum Jülich

Bad memories, bad dreams in library ICT security?
Bad memories, bad dreams in library ICT security?
Dr. Julien Van Born and Dr . Richard Philips, Chief librarian of the University of Antwerp
and system manager of the library automation network organised by the University of
Antwerp
Abstract
This paper describes the security procedures in Anet, the library automation network of the
University of Antwerp in Belgium. It also explores the occasionally overhyped myths ofICT
security in general using examples from the personal experience of the authors and a
statement by the Gartner company.
Concern about data security is not new
Concern about data security in libraries is not new. Right from the beginning of the library
automation era (the seventies of the past century), stories were told about lost punched cards
and magnetic tapes. But even before that era a library was at risk of losing irreplaceable data .
One of the authors of this article (J. Van Born) had just started his library career at the
University of Leuven-Louvain (at that time still a bilingual university) . In the years previous
to the splitting of this Belgian University into a Flemish and a French-speaking university the
unrest among students of the two cultural groups was great. This unrest was combined with
the general student unrest of 1968 throughout Europe and the world at large .
On the afternoon of October 17th 1969, the keeper ofthe catalogues came to see me and told
me that two catalogue drawers full of written and typed catalogue cards were missing . These
were in part irreplaceable since no duplicates existed for the titles kept in the over 300 faculty
and departmental libraries . I soon discovered the relation between this fact and the general
unrest at the university . On the morning of the same day, a student meeting had been held at
the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters whereby the students had demanded the nomination of
a Flemish librarian for the Central Library . At the same meeting action was announced
against the library under the code name : "shoebox" . For several days I tried to contact the
authors of this action by strolling through the city of Leuven and visiting during and after
work the pubs in which the student leaders of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters were
usually to be found . In vain! The drawers were only returned to the library in anonymously
several weeks afterwards . Many years later I had a talk with one of the "perpetrators" of this
act telling him that it almost had ended my library career. As a matter of fact, I got the
information on the students meeting via a befriended student . She told me what had happened
at that meeting, including the statement that a prominent Flemish professor had backed up the
actions against the Central Library. Since I refused to reveal the name of the student who had
passed on to me in confidence the information about the "shoebox" operation, I was accused
by that same professor of spreading a defamatory statement. The university authorities were
asked to put an end to my contract as an assistant librarian . The university authorities were
wise enough not to accept the allegation and in doing so saved my library career. The lesson
learnt: data loss can be lethal!
123