Most books aren't specially interesting. The history of the books that you borrow in the public library is registered with your library customer card, address and name. Some local libraries or universities will ask you to write your name in a card when you take the book and let the card in the shelf. Therefore anybody could read the names of the former five or ten people that borrow the book before, and how many days they have it.
The complete history for some "person of interest" shouldn't be much complicated to obtain for authorities. Maybe anybody borrowing a lot of controversial texts in a short time and a small village would trigger some alerts. Who knows. Let suppose that this is a library specialized in history and the book title written in the public card is "mein kampf", for example.
> or in response to some form of judicial process (subpoena, search warrant, or other court order).
So basically, this info is available and can be used against you in a trial. Is a fake sense of privacy.
The main difference between public libraries and internet is that the former have much less controversial adult or political stuff but a lot of stablished literature touch taboo and very sensitive matter. Has this people read 'Lolita', 'the Catcher in the Rye' or took a look to 'The Capital' in the past?, has borrow a Quran recently? For how many days? How many times? Any attorney could easily use pseudoscience and cheap psychology to draw a line and build a relate leading to any conclusion of their interest with this info.
Most books aren't specially interesting. The history of the books that you borrow in the public library is registered with your library customer card, address and name. Some local libraries or universities will ask you to write your name in a card when you take the book and let the card in the shelf. Therefore anybody could read the names of the former five or ten people that borrow the book before, and how many days they have it.
The complete history for some "person of interest" shouldn't be much complicated to obtain for authorities. Maybe anybody borrowing a lot of controversial texts in a short time and a small village would trigger some alerts. Who knows. Let suppose that this is a library specialized in history and the book title written in the public card is "mein kampf", for example.