How to Keep Things Private

So I (like so many of you) inherited a forgotten little church library.
I am wondering what kind of system I should use for signing out books that keeps things private (eg. for someone taking out a book on marital strife and wanting to keep it private)

I must say your comment took me totally by surprise! As a clergyman myself, having begun that sixty-three years ago, I cannot imagine anyone ever having to control or try to keep such a thing as that confidential. It makes me mainly ask you to say a little more about what you see your specific role or purpose to be with the readers you are serving?

I've recently relocated and have begun to re-organize the library of the church I now attend.
I can appreciate the desire some people have for privacy.
The library I oversee still uses cards in the back of every book. I've thought about blackening each name on the card after they have been returned.
So far nobody has complained so I haven't had to do that.

Have you considered using TinyCat's digital check out? It should keep names concealed nicely.

Privacy is a huge concern. It is no one else's business what I - or any other person - is reading.

In my former library, we did as >3 PequeaLibrary: has considered.

In the church library I've inherited, I'm assigning each book a number, and people are writing the number down on a check out sheet.

We haven't moved to anything digital yet. If our congregation were more digitally-inclined, we might try Tiny Cat, but I don't see that happening for a while.

>1 KristenGWiens: We have a sign out list on a clipboard. To check out a book, we ask people to write in their name, the author's name, and the bar code number.
Once a week that info is entered into our TinyCat circ system and library team members (4 people) are the only ones who see what they've checked out.

>4 Hope_H: We also use a number - in this case the barcode number - and also ask for the author's name. This helps out a LOT when someone writes down four digits from the ISBN number by mistake, as we can track back by the author's name and look to see what's missing from the shelves.
It took us forever to switch over to TinyCat for checkouts, and now once a week we add in new checkouts from the clipboards. It's been great to have automatic reminders of due dates!

>1 KristenGWiens: We use a clipboard for check outs and ask for people to write in their name, the book's author, and the barcode number.
Nobody sees what the title is until the library team (4 people) enters that info into the TinyCat circ system.