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Abstract
The evolution of data collection practices in education is having a powerful and transformative effect on educational assessment practices. Increasing pressure to collect and analyze student information for assessment purposes has created a unique situation for academic libraries which traditionally view user data privacy as of paramount importance. This article highlights the distinct challenges faced by the library profession as it moves into the new reality of Big Data and fervently calls for a conversation about these issues in both the professional literature and the library profession.
Introduction
Educational institutions in the United States have embarked upon the "Era of Big Data." Big Data, defined as "extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions" ("Big Data," 2013), is quickly becoming a transformative force in educational assessment practices. On the surface, Big Data might sound like the perfect approach to meeting the increased demand for assessment data at all levels of education in the United States. There are, however, a number of inherent characteristics which make it difficult to ensure the secure collection and storage of Big Data: specifically, the large volume of data sets involved, the high velocity at which the data accrue, and the variety of data formats which might be included in the data sets (Bieraugel, 2010).
Big Data does represent a new and exciting stage in the evolution of data collection and analysis for assessment purposes, but educational institutions must take care to consider the ethical issues related to the secure collection and storage of data, especially personally identifiable information, that arise with its wide-scale adoption. Complicating the consideration of such matters is the fact that there is not a single agreed upon definition for personally identifiable information (PII). Some definitions of PII are broad and open to interpretation, while others are narrower and prescriptive. United States privacy law understands PII to be "personal data" as defined by the Department of International Law of the Organization of American States: "all personal information of any kind referred to people. Thus, it not only refers to private information of the person, but to any kind of data, whether or not private, that may affect rights if used by...