If a patron is looking for another patron–a child, an adult, or whatever–and requests that staff announce his/her name over the loudspeaker, it’s ok to do it. This happens so rarely that I can’t figure out a reason we wouldn’t try to help in this way.
If someone says they’re looking for “Jaques Strap“, “Al Caholic”, or “Oliver Clothesoff”, use your best judgement.
[UPDATE]
Some staff have raised some questions on this topic so I’ll try to provide some more detail. The issue gets muddled with privacy concerns but, as I mentioned in a post last week, it’s difficult to imagine–practically or legally–that it’s reasonable for someone to expect not to be seen in a public space. Knowledge of a person’s presence in a space is different than knowledge of what that person is reading or doing in that space. ALA says, “A library cannot be responsible for someone being seen or recognized in a library but should take steps to protect user privacy whenever possible. That is, in a library, a user’s face may be recognized, but that does not mean that the subject of the user’s interest must also be known.”
If someone comes into the building looking for someone else, the preferable way for them to locate them is to walk around and look. If they can’t walk around or the situation seems urgent–e.g. a lost child–announce the person’s first name and last initial and ask them to come to wherever the person is.
If someone calls and asks if someone is in the library, tell the person that our procedure is to take the name and description of the person being looked for and the phone number of the caller. Tell the caller that we’re a little busy right now but that we can try to locate the person and have them return the call (using our public phone if needed).