What private or personally identifiable information does Google Analytics collect?

Symptom

• We are setting up Google Analytics G4 for WorldCat Discovery.

• We are asked the following question. “I acknowledge that I have the necessary privacy disclosures and rights from my end users for the collection and processing of their data, including the association of such data with the visitation information Google Analytics collects from my site and/or app property.”

Applies to

• WorldCat Discovery

Answer

Private/Personally Identifiable Information about users is not being passed to Google Analytics from WorldCat Discovery. We understand how important privacy of data is and ensured that would not be the case when developing this integration with Google Analytics 4.

Additional information

While we do not pass any private or personally identifiable information, the information you are getting from Google Analytics is your users’ data, so we understand that institutions will want/need to get consent to collect this data. In our community session on Google Analytics 4, we had a few institutions share their best practices for doing this:

• A few libraries have shared that faculty and students can sign a universal waiver for their institution for things like being recorded (for hybrid learning) or having their data processed when going to university websites.
• Talking to your institution’s Research/Legal Affairs office might be helpful. 

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