Portico Privacy Policy

Portico is committed to protecting the privacy of the users of its website. To better inform you of our policies regarding user privacy, we have adopted the following guidelines.

Information Collected

You may use this informational website without providing your name, email address or other personal information. By visiting the Portico site, however, you necessarily provide us with an IP address, which does not identify you personally, but enables Portico to identify and communicate with your computer while you are visiting the site. If you send an email message to us at support@portico.org or to any other Portico email address, you are also providing us with your email address, which we will need to reply to your message. We also may collect certain non-personal information, such as the type of browser you are using (e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer), the type of operating system you are using, (e.g., Windows 2000 or Mac OS), and the domain name of your Internet service provider.

When the Portico archive is made available, access will typically be verified by IP address, however, in some cases, users may be required to provide a username and password or other personal information in order to access the Portico archive, and we will collect usage data regarding the Portico archive. We will not use or share any data collected in connection with use of the Portico archive except as set forth below under "Use of the Information" and "Sharing Information."

Use of the Information

We will use the information collected or provided by users to facilitate use of the Portico informational website, to respond to user inquiries about Portico, to improve the design of our site, for system administration and troubleshooting purposes. When the Portico archive is made available, we will also use the information collected to enable us to respond to uses of the Portico archive that are in violation of the terms of use agreed to by your participating institution, and in aggregated form, to track and analyze site usage.

Use of Cookies

The Portico archive website will employ "cookie" technology. Cookies are small pieces of text that are stored on your computer. The Portico archive website will use cookies to store your preferences and to store user authentication information. The cookies used for storing user authentication information will be deleted when you exit your browser.

Security

We have physical, electronic, and managerial measures in place to prevent unauthorized access to user information. We do not, however, claim any responsibility for information collected by or from websites linking to or from Portico. These sites may have their own privacy policies, or no policies at all. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of these other sites before providing them with any personal information.

Sharing Information

Portico will only share personal information about individual users in the special circumstances described below. Portico may share general usage data - in aggregated form so that no personal information is identifiable - with participating libraries, publishers and the general public.

Portico may disclose personal information if we believe in good faith that such action is necessary to comply with the law, to protect against violations of the Portico terms of use, or to protect against violations of the rights of participating publishers, libraries and/or other contributors to the Portico archive.

Opting Out

Portico will remove you and your personal information from our database on request. Please note that this may cancel your access to the Portico archive.

Questions or Comments

Feel free to address any questions or comments regarding this privacy policy to support@portico.org.

Last updated on June 28, 2006