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Heidelberg Historical Society main page

Effective: 10 November 2014

Introduction

The privacy of your personal information is important to the Heidelberg Historical Society (Society).

This Privacy Policy describes the way the Society collects, holds, uses and discloses your personal information. The Policy also addresses how you may access your personal information held by the Society, seek correction of your information and make a complaint.

Your personal information is collected by the Society as part of its activities in carrying out its Statement of Purposes (a copy of which is accessible on the website of the Society). Your personal information may be a valuable source of information about the history of the Heidelberg and surrounding area, the history of individuals and families who have resided in the area and/or local institutions.

Personal information is information or an opinion about you or that could identify you.

From time to time, the Society may review and update its privacy policy. If this happens, revised versions of the privacy policy will be posted on the website of the Society and advised to members in the Society’s newsletter ‘Heidelberg Historian’.

Kinds of personal information the Society collects and holds

The categories of material that the Society collects and holds containing personal information are:

Membership information

The register of members contains the following information:

If you cease being a member of the Society the above-mentioned information about you, other than your name and the date you ceased to be a member, are removed from the register of members.

The Associations Act permits a member to make a request to inspect the register of members. The Society must comply with the request except in respect of personal information of a member subject to a restriction on access. A member may make a request to the Secretary of the Society to restrict access to personal information recorded in the register of members. If the Secretary is satisfied that there are special circumstances which justify doing so, the Secretary must agree to the request. If the Secretary refuses the request the person may apply to the Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal for review of the decision.

The Associations Act permits the Society to use or disclose information in the register where it is directly related to the management or purposes of the Society. It is otherwise illegal for a person to use information obtained from the register to contact or send materials to another person and for information to be disclosed knowing it is likely to be used for such purposes.

With consent of a member, the Society also collects additional contact details from members (such as telephone numbers and email addresses) for communication purposes.

How the Society collects personal information

The primary sources from which the Society collects personal information are:

The Society collects your personal information directly from you and, in some cases, from other persons or organisations and it may also be contained in generally available publications.

Agreements are signed with donors of material to the Society and persons providing an oral history or written memoir that set out the terms on which the Society receives material and its use and disclosure and the ownership and intellectual property rights in respect of material.

Anonymity and pseudonymity

You have the option of not identifying yourself, or of using a pseudonym, when dealing with the Society in relation to a particular matter. If this is practicable, the Society will advise you of how this would be implemented.

If you opt to do so, the Society reserves the right not to deal with you where it considers it to be impracticable. For example, your name must be provided by law for membership purposes (see above). In relation to donation of material, the Society will likely require to have a record of your name and contact details in order to be informed about the provenance of material received. In providing an oral history or memoir, it may not be possible to avoid revealing your identity either directly or indirectly.

Storage of personal information

Your personal information is held at the Museum of the Society located at Jika Street, Heidelberg, Victoria.

Within the Museum there is a library containing generally available publications, such as books, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets and reports. Most of the material contains personal information.

Exemption for records in the Museum

You should note that the Privacy Act 1988 (C’th) does not apply to records kept in a museum for the purposes of reference, study or exhibition or to a generally available publication. A generally available publication is a magazine, book, article, newspaper or other publication that is generally available to members of the public. Therefore, privacy obligations under the Act do not apply to your personal information collected and held by the Society in those circumstances.

Purposes for which the Society collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information

For Membership information, the purposes are to enable the Society to maintain a register of members (see above), to communicate with members, to enable authorization of access to the Museum and to grant access to it’s on-line services.

In relation to Local History information, personal information is collected, held, used and disclosed for the following purposes:

The Society discloses Local History information to members of the Society and to members of the public who access the information at the Museum.

The Society charges fees for providing Local History information (that may include personal information) to members of the Society and to members of the public who request a copy of material held by the Society. The fees generally relate to photocopying costs and costs for reproduction of photographs and digital material. Occasionally, the Society charges fees for conducting research and providing information in response to inquiries.

The Society may disclose personal information about you where it is required or permitted to do so by law.

Sensitive information

Personal information collected by the Society may include sensitive information, is defined by the Privacy Act. The Society will handle your personal information in accordance with legal requirements.

Overseas disclosure

The Society receives communications from persons located overseas making inquiries and seeking information, which generally concern the history of the Heidelberg and wider surrounding area, the history of individuals and families who have resided in the area and/or local institutions.

Where relevant to an inquiry, the Society may disclose your personal information in responding to communications received from persons located overseas.

By providing us with your personal information, you consent to the Society disclosing your personal information to overseas recipients where it is considered relevant to a response to be sent to a person located overseas. In these circumstances, Australian Privacy Principal 8.1 will not apply, which means, the Society will not be responsible for ensuring that overseas recipients of your personal information comply with the Australian Privacy Principles, and you will not be able to seek redress under the Privacy Act.

Based on requests received by the Society in the past from persons located overseas, the countries in which overseas recipients to whom the Society may disclose with your personal information are most likely to be located in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Dealing with the Society on-line

When you visit the Society’s website you will browse anonymously unless you have logged into a members portal or accessed the website from a personalised communication from the Society.

For all visitors to our web site, the web browser collects information, such as the server your computer is logged on to, your browser type (for example, Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox) and your IP address. An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer automatically and required for using the Internet. We may also derive the general geographic area associated with an IP address. This information is only used by the Society for auditing and security purposes and as summary data relating to the nature of inquiries made of the databases of the Society by visitors to our website.

If you are an anonymous visitor, the information we collect is not capable of personally identifying you.

Cookies

Cookies may be sent to your web browser, particularly if you log onto the members portal. Our cookies are just random strings like this:

849d0bfb2bff6c5e2f46fd3fd9a427d7

They do not contain any personal information about you as such, however they are used to remember that you are logged on, or what your most recent search term was, so it can be offered to you when you return to a certain page.

We do not use any cookies from third-party sites.

Members portal

Members of the Society may access via the internet information held on the website of the Society. The members may make comments in respect of digital images held on the website and update a members roster, which are addressed further below.

Once you have logged into the members portal, accessed our website from an e-mail or other personalised communication sent to you or provided us with personal information by completing a form online, it would be possible to identify you. If we have identified you, we may be able to link your identity to your previous anonymous browsing history and collect information about your possible future use of our websites, irrespective of how you access our site. However, the Society does not ordinarily seek to identify members in such circumstances.

Comments regarding digital images

A member may insert a comment in respect of a digital image on the website of the Society. If you insert a comment, your comment will be visible initially to other members via the members portal. If your comment is accepted by the Society it will be incorporated into the record viewable by the public. As part of making a comment you must supply a name to identify yourself, however that name does not have to be your full name. For example, you may state your initials.

Your membership number of the Society is recorded internally alongside each comment for auditing and moderation purposes, however this is not displayed to other persons who have access to the website.

Members are requested not to insert comments that identify or interfere with the privacy of living persons.

Sunday Museum roster

The Society maintains a roster recording members who have voluntarily nominated to attend at the Museum of the Society on Sunday afternoons when the Museum is open to the public, generally from February to early December each year. The roster is maintained in electronic format, which is accessible to members only via the member’s portal on the website of the Society, and also in hard copy format.

When a member records their name and phone number (phone number is optional but desirable for contact purposes) on the Sunday roster it will be disclosed to other Society members. This is for the purpose of letting rostered members contact each other with a view to organizing swaps or let their Team Leader know if they are running late or cannot attend.

Accuracy of information

The Society takes reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information it holds about you is accurate, complete and up to date. The Society relies on you to provide accurate and complete information and to advise of any changes appropriate to that information.

Security of information

The Society takes reasonable steps within its capabilities and resources to protect all personal information within its direct control from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. The Society takes reasonable steps to hold information securely in electronic or hardcopy formats in access controlled premises or in electronic databases requiring logins and passwords.

How you may access and correct your personal information

You can contact us to request access to your personal information. You may also request the correction of personal information about you if you feel the information we have is inaccurate or incomplete.

In normal circumstances we will give you access to your personal information or make the requested corrections to your information. However, there may be some legal, administrative or other reasons to deny these requests. If your request is denied, we will provide you with our reasons. Where we decide not to make a requested correction to your personal information and you disagree, you may ask us to make a note of your requested correction which we will include in the records of the Society.

A charge may apply for providing you with access to your personal information. For example, a charge may apply where there is voluminous material or it would be time consuming to identify or extract relevant information.

Contact us

If you have any questions regarding our privacy policy or your personal information or wish to make a complaint about the way that your personal information has been handled by the Society, please contact us either by:

Writing to:

The Secretary
Heidelberg Historical Society Inc.
PO Box 39
Heidelberg  VIC 3084
AUSTRALIA

Emailing: , marked to the attention of The Secretary, Heidelberg Historical Society Inc.

More information about Australian Privacy Principles

Visit http://www.oaic.gov.au (Office of the Australian Information Commissioner)

More information about Incorporated Associations

Visit http://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/clubs-and-not-for-profits/incorporated-associations (Consumer Affairs Victoria)

Updated on: 20th September 2023

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