The Right to Be Forgotten and Implications on Digital Collections: A Survey of ARL Member Institutions on Practice and Policy

Abstract

In the spring of 2017, digital librarians and digital collection managers at member institutions of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) were surveyed on practices and policies surrounding takedown requests in openly accessible digital collections. The survey collected basic demographic information surrounding the digital repositories (anonymized) and presented a series of hypothetical scenarios for respondents to consider and reflect upon. The survey received a 25.8 percent response rate, with many intriguing insights. Survey findings are presented, along with a discussion on future recommendations for work in this area.