Data Protection
Important information
Thank you for visiting our website, viewer.wu.ac.at, and for your interest in our digital collections. Protecting your personal data is very important to us. In the following paragraphs, we have put together key information about the types of data that are collected during website visits and processed in accordance with the applicable data protection regulations..
Personal data
Personal data are pieces of information regarding the personal or material circumstances of an identified or identifiable natural person. This includes information such as a person’s real name, mailing address, phone number, and date of birth. Information that cannot be correlated with a person’s real identity does not qualify as personal data, e.g. the number of users of our website and similar aggregate data.
Anonymous data collection
You can access our digital collections without telling us who you are. We only see your IP address, the website you were on before visiting our pages, and the web pages that you access on our site. This data is processed and analyzed for statistical purposes. As an individual user, you remain anonymous.
Registered users
Registration is required to use features such as private and public reading lists and to participate in expert sourcing / crowdsourcing activities. You can create a user account for this purpose.
When you create a user account, viewer.wu.ac.at will save the following data::
- Email address
- First and last name
- Nickname (user name)
- Hashed password (if you don’t use third-party authentication)
- Last login
- Registration date
When registered users participate in expert sourcing / crowdsourcing work, viewer.wu.ac.at will save every change made together with the corresponding user name and a time stamp.
If a user creates a reading list and marks it as public, the system will display the name of the reading list and the owner’s nickname or shortened, anonymized email address.
If registered users save a search in their user account, viewer.wu.ac.at will store the search together with the corresponding user name.
Use of cookies
Cookies are small pieces of data that allow us to store specific information about the user on the user’s computer during website visits. We use cookies to keep track of how many users visit our web pages and how often they return, and to make our services more convenient and efficient for our users. We use two types of cookies: session cookies that are only stored temporarily for the duration of your visit on one of our web pages and permanent cookies. Permanent cookies are used to store information about computers that visit our website repeatedly. This allows us to optimize user navigation and “recognize” returning visitors. In this way, we can offer you an interesting web experience and new content whenever you come back to our pages. A permanent cookie contains only an ID number. We don’t save your name, IP address, or any other information about your real identity, and we don’t create any personalized profiles to track your user behavior. It is possible to use our services without cookies. In the “Tools” or “Internet options” menu of your browser, you can disable cookies, define a whitelist of websites for which cookies are allowed, or ask to receive a notification every time a cookie is sent. You can also delete cookies from your computer’s hard drive. Please note, however, that this may impair the display settings and the usability of our web pages.
Matomo
Our website uses the open source web analytics software Matomo (formerly Piwik) for the statistical analysis of website visits. We use Matomo with a configuration that is compliant with the applicable data protection regulations, and it stores only anonymized data. For that purpose, we use session cookies, i.e. small text files that are stored on your computer to allow us to analyze your use of our website. The usage information created by the cookie is stored on our server. Your IP address is anonymized immediately after processing, and before the information is saved. We use the anonymized data collected by Matomo to improve our services. Matomo stores IP addresses without the last tuple. This means that we know from which network our site was accessed, but not from which computer.
The session cookies do not contain any personal data and are deleted after the end of each browser session. We do not use any alternative techniques for tracking user behavior, like Java applets or ActiveX controls.
The following types of data are stored for every website visit/access:
- The first two parts of the IP address
- Date and time
- User agent of the software used
- The web page visited / name of the accessed file
- Data transmission volume
- Status notification for successful/unsuccessful access
Here you can decide whether you want to give us your permission for creating a unique web analytics cookie in your browser. Such a cookie allows the website operator to collect and analyze various types of statistical data.
By using this website, you give us your consent to use Matomo to process data collected from you in the ways described above and for the above-mentioned purposes.
If you do decide to opt out, please click the Matomo opt-out feature at the bottom of this page to place the Matomo opt-out cookie in your browser.
Further information and contact
For general questions regarding data protection, please contact datenschutz@wu.ac.at. You can reach WU’s Data Protection Officer at datenschutzbeauftragter@wu.ac.at.
If you have any further questions regarding data protection at the WU University Library, please contact the Library Data Protection Officer.
In compliance with the applicable data protection regulations, we will automatically delete any personal data stored about you when the data is no longer required for the purposes for which it was stored in the first place or if storing the data is not permissible pursuant to other legal regulations. In some cases where data retention is required by law (e.g. statutory data retention obligations), we may block access to your personal data instead of deleting the data altogether.
WU University Library Privacy Policy
