Southwark Council uses your personal data so you can join and use our libraries. We require some of your personal data (name, age and contact details) to administer your library card. We require this information to fulfil a contract with you. The remaining information, which you may or may not choose to provide us, will be used by the library service to inform us on how we should develop our service and products. The council requires your permission to process this data.

As part of joining the library service you will be asked whether you want to sign up to the monthly Southwark Presents newsletter for news of arts, culture and heritage activities across the borough. You can opt in or out of this at any time and it does not impact upon your library membership.

You will also be asked whether you want to share your data with our partner library authorities in the South East Library Management System consortium (SELMS). If you do this then you will be able to use your library card in the following authorities without having to join these library services separately: Brighton and Hove, Buckinghamshire, Camden, Hertfordshire, Kent, Medway, Milton Keynes, Reading, Richmond, Slough, Southend, West Berkshire, Windsor and Maidenhead. You can opt in or out of this at any time and it does not impact upon your Southwark library membership.

Your personal information will be reviewed or destroyed after 7 years. You have the right to ask for any of your details to be removed at any point in time from our records however please note that by removing your contact details or date of birth, you may not be able to use the library services.

More information about your rights is available on our website, or via the Information Commissioner (www.ico.org.uk).