As information technology advances at a rapid pace, librarians must take action to continue their traditional roles as champions of privacy and intellectual freedom into the digital age. Social media is quickly becoming a major source of information and center for information seeking, and librarians have an opportunity to promote and help shape social media policies that protect users' privacy and assure that users can seek information without inhibition. This article recalls librarians' historical privacy campaigns, investigates the impact of social media on privacy, and offers librarians a plan for joining the social media user rights movement by advocating terms-of-use agreements that protect information seekers. q1 S ocial media is the most prevalent Internet activity, overtaking even pornography as the most popular online pastime (Fontecilla 2013). Social media has become people's primary source for news, opinions, and the human connection. It fosters social movements and catalyzes political change around the world. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies are quickly becoming ingrained in society as information portals. A recent Pew Research Center study found that more than 90% of online teens participate in social media. The social media giant Facebook has over a billion users (Pew Research Center 2013b). As one librarian explains, "If Facebook were a country and its users citizens, it would be the third most populous country in the world, behind only China and India" (Griffey 2010). q2 Librarians, as information science specialists, stand at the pinnacle of this information revolution, creating social media policies and methods of use. In some communities, libraries often provide the only Internet access available to the public, making libraries the sole access point for online social media (Privacy Resources 2013). q3 As social media provides library users with information, it also collects volumes of personal data, from biographical information to information about personal affiliations with people, organizations, and institutions. Social media data contains chat logs, message files, tweets, photos, videos, tags, GPS locations, "likes," check-ins, log-in timetables, pins, and even clicks.

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This paper demonstrates the divergent requestor privacy policies of professional librarians and the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and urges the federal government to adhere to librarian ethics in order to protect FOIA requestors. Section 1 of the paper provides information about the origins and purpose of the FOIA. Section 2 offers an overview of the philosophical and historical origins of library patron privacy ethics, discussing both the ethical basis for patron privacy and actual instances where library records have been sought for government surveillance of private citizens. Section 3 describes the state library laws that protect library requestors, as well as federal laws that protect non-FOIA requestor privacy rights, including the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which protects video rental records. Section 4 of the paper warns that, in the digital era, it is more important than ever to safeguard personal information like that contained in FOIA requests to prevent the stifling of information seeking activities in the United States. By modifying laws tomeet the needs of the "information age," the United States government can embrace and utilize the ethical standards that are at the foundation of librarianship, and protect the principle that information should be free and available to the American populace.

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