5.3 Legislation relating to the use of ICT for storage, manipulation and access of information

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Data Protection Act
   1. The eight principles of good practice
   2. The six conditions for fair data processing
   3. Sensitive data
   4. Rights under the Act
   5. Criminal offences created by the Act
   6. Unsolicited electronic communications
   7. The role of the Information Commissioner's Office
   8. Other Useful DPA websites
3. Copyright legislation
4. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

Data Protection Act

The Data Protection Act 1998 applies across the UK and gives legal rights to individuals in respect of their personal data held by others. Libraries must ensure that the ways they process personal data of clients and staff, whether manually recorded or computerised, comply with the provisions of the Act. This is particularly relevant to client data stored in an automatic library management system. Such ICT based systems facilitate analysis of client data which would not be possible with manual systems.

The following information is extracted from the Data Protection Act Fact Sheet, which can be downloaded from the Information Commissioner's website at: http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/.

The Data Protection Act 1998 seeks to strike a balance between the rights of individuals and the sometimes competing interests of those with legitimate reasons for using personal information.

We will look at the following useful sections:

• The eight principles of good practice
• The six conditions for fair data processing
• Sensitive data
• Rights under the Act
• Criminal offences created by the Act
• Unsolicited electronic communications
• The role of the Information Commissioner's Office

Let's start by looking at The eight principles of good practice ...