Privacy and cookies
Last updated: May 2012
As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. Continuous log files are maintained for the JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives support site web server activity and the information collected includes details of:
- • IP addresses
- • browser types
- • Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
- • referring/exit pages
- • platform types
- • operating systems
- • date/time stamps
- • number of clicks
- • clickstream data
We may use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyse trends, administer the website, track users' movements around the website, improve users' experiences with the website, and gather broad demographic information about our user base as a whole.
Please note that we do not link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information. However, the data may be kept in an anonymysed form for historical records.
Cookies
What are cookies and what are they used for?
Cookies are small text files that are stored by your web browser. They are primarily used to remember if users have visited the website before, and to improve the way that sites work. For example, cookies can be used to:
- • remember information such as passwords so that you don’t need to keep re-entering it
- • personalise content by recording search and display choices such as layouts
- • provide social network facilities
- • record usage information to help us understand users and ensure we are providing the right support.
There are different types of cookies, for example:
First party and third party cookies
First party cookies are set by the website you’re visiting. They send data only to the servers for that domain, and the data cannot be altered or retrieved by any other website. If a user visits a website and a separate company sets a cookie through that website, this is a third party cookie. Examples of third party cookies are those set by social networks.
Session and persistent cookies
Cookies can expire at the end of a browser session or they can be stored for longer. Session cookies are not stored long-term; they are set when you visit a website, and expire as soon as the browser is closed.
Persistent cookies are stored on your device in between browser sessions and allow preferences to be remembered. Persistent cookies are used for a variety of reasons including recording your preferred search results display.
To find out more about cookies, visit AboutCookies.org or All About Cookies.
How we use cookies
We use the following cookies on our site (http://ecollections.mimas.ac.uk):
Cookies for Measuring Website Usage (Google Analytics)
We use Google Analytics to analyse how our visitors use this website, in order to improve your experience on the site.
Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies, which are available only to http://ecollections.mimas.ac.uk and don’t reveal any personally identifiable information.
| Provider | Name | Typical Content | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|
| __utma | Randomly generated number | 2 years | |
| __utmb | Randomly generated number | 30 minutes | |
| __utmc | Randomly generated number | When you close your browser | |
| __utmx | Randomly generated number | 2 years | |
| __utmxx | Randomly generated number | 2 years | |
| __utmz | Randomly generated number and information on how the site was reached (e.g. direct or via a link, organic search or paid search) | 6 months |
More information about Google Analytics cookies is available here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/resources/concepts/gaConceptsCookies
If you wish, you can opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, see: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout .
Social Sharing
We use buttons to enable sharing of pages with social networking sites. These buttons may place a third party cookie on your device, which could gather usage information. Find out more about these cookies here:
Notification of changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy over time, we will post those changes to this privacy statement and other places we deem appropriate so our users/visitors are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. Any changes made will be effective when posted.
Managing and deleting cookies
We use cookies to improve the way our website works, and we don’t gather any personally identifiable information. Blocking or deleting the cookies will impact on the way that the site works and you could lose some functionality, however you can control and manage cookies if you wish.
You can visit AboutCookies.org for more information about how to control cookies on the major web browsers.
