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LOUIS Websites Privacy Policy

LOUIS is a consortium of public and private college and university libraries in the state of Louisiana. It is important to LOUIS that the personal information of users at our member libraries is protected and that you are aware of what data is being passively collected about you when you use LOUIS websites. 

The LOUIS Website, LOUIS Pressbooks site, LOUIS Task Portal and help desk, LOUIS member Enterprise websites (the discovery technology used by many college and university libraries across the state) and LOUIS member ILLiad sites (used for interlibrary loan) employ Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc., to collect and analyze information obtained from online visitors for the purposes of improving our services. LOUIS uses the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a best practice guideline in how its analytics are configured, including anonymizing the IP address of all users. This minimizes the possibility that collected analytics data can be traced to individual users. LOUIS has taken the following steps in Google Analytics' Universal Analytics product to ensure this:

  • Disabled all data sharing options 
  • Disabled all advertising features 
  • Disabled user analysis 
  • Disabled all the Data Collection for Advertising Features 
  • Disabled Remarketing and Advertising Reporting Features 
  • Disallowed all regions from Ads personalization 
  • Set data retention to the minimum amount of time possible (14 months) and disabled “reset on new activity” 
  • Disabled the User-ID 
  • Disabled all product linking 
  • Enabled Google Analytics IP anonymization 

In July 2023, Google Analytics stopped supporting Universal Analytics and instead switched to Google Analytics 4 which has enhanced privacy settings and functionality. For example, GA4 automatically uses anonymized IP addresses. In addition, LOUIS has taken the following steps in Google Analytics 4 to continue our commitment to respecting user privacy:

  • Disabled all data sharing options 
  • Disabled granular location and device data collection
  • Disabled ads personalization
  • Set user and event data retention to 2 months with no reset on new activity
  • Identify users by device only
  • Disabled Google Signals
  • Set cookies* to expire as soon as the session ends

Until Universal Analytics is completely sunset, LOUIS websites and LOUIS Member Enterprise websites will use both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4. After Universal Analytics is sunset, its tags will be removed from the aforementioned sites, and only Google Analytics 4 will be in use.

*Google Analytics does use “cookies”, or small text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. Cookies allow Google Analytics to identify unique users across browsing sessions, but they cannot identify unique users across different browsers , websites, or devices, nor do they collect personally identifiable information. More information about Google's data privacy and security measures is available in their policies.  

You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. You may also disable Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. You may turn off Ads Personalization by going to adssettings.google.com and toggling Ad Personalization off.