Still, according to Senior Director of Federal and State Relations Kevin Casey, University officials have been taking steps to “educate” both employees and users about the Patriot Act’s specific demands, and what it means for their daily work.

Last year Casey and representatives from the General Counsel’s Office held a workshop for library employees laying out the law’s implications.

“When the seminar was held at the office of the General Counsel, it was very well attended,” says Library spokesperson Beth Brainard. “There was a lot of misinformation and a lot of concern.”

Fears dissipated markedly following the session, she says. “[The employees] were very much relieved. Before 9-11, federal investigators coming into the library was something we didn’t really think about,” she explains. “After 9-11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, our level of awareness on many things has been heightened.

And what concern remains isn’t making its way to the top of advocates’ dockets. Casey says the Association of American Universities (AAU), the main lobbying organization he works with, hasn’t put as much force behind opposition to Section 215 because it prefers to devote resources to legislation applying exclusively to universities.

“It has not been the primary focus of the AAU, [since] other groups have been lobbying for those interests as well,” he says.

But among library affiliates within many of the universities comprising the AAU, Section 215 remains a major concern. Harvard works closely with the Association of Research Libraries, Verba says. And since the passage of the Patriot Act concern about records has been one of its chief priorities.

The Association hopes eventually to modify legislation to exempt university libraries from the Patriot Act’s provisions.

This option may not be pie in the sky.

LIBRARIES OF CONGRESS

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill have called Section 215 into question since the passage of the Patriot Act. The proposed “Library, Bookseller, and Personal Records Privacy Act,” currently under consideration in the Senate, would limit the federal access to records that the Patriot Act accords, while the so-called “Library and Bookseller Protection Act,” also pending in the Senate, would check the provisions of Section 215 by amending the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to exempt libraries and bookstores from federal demands for user records. A related bill under consideration in the House would require government agents to produce “tangible things” after a library investigation to prove it was necessary.

According to the University of Illinois study, a razor-thin majority of librarians who encountered information requests from law enforcement agents did not cooperate. Similar data has been shown in more local studies. The data is ambiguous, though, since it’s difficult to distinguish how many of these cases fall under the provisions of Section 215.

Still, Harvard is taking no chances. It won’t be breaking any rules.

“We are required to obey the law,” Verba explains. “We attempt to interpret the law as best we can.”

Brainard says she doesn’t find an inescapable contradiction between the legal requirements and the Library’s responsibilities to its readers.