first interview: student worker.

I asked a friend of mine that works in the library if she would do an interview to help me out for my project.  She helped to point me in the right direction, as someone who spends several hours a week there.  A couple things that she said were interesting and helpful:

MC: Do you ever get distracted by noise from people upstairs?

My Friend:  Sometimes, so… you might have experienced this, but the library has those couches that are, like--I don’t know what material they are made out of--but when you sit on them, they make this noise, and it sounds like you’re farting.  And they have those couches upstairs, and so literally like all day long it’ll be that noise and then people start laughing.

MC: Are there ever large groups of people that might get louder at times?

My Friend:  Umm…  Sometimes... [she goes on.]

MC: Are there specific times that you’ve noticed that are more busy than others?

My Friend:  Well, yeah.  Thursday mornings there’s always a lot of people.  A lot of that I think comes from the café. People get coffee in the mornings and so the lobby is always like super packed on Thursday mornings.  The weekends, its usually pretty quiet: Friday and Saturday afternoon.  But then Sunday night is usually fairly busy because everybody tries to get their homework done for the next week.

MC: Were you surprised by anything when you started?

My Friend:  I had to take a little test about like call numbers and stuff to make sure I knew how to put all the books in order.  So that was kinda funny.  

We talked for about 10 minutes, so this is only a part of it.  It'll definitely be helpful as I move forward.  There are a couple themes that I had already begun thinking about that she touched on, so I was glad to talk to her.

artifact: keyboards.

For my cultural artifact, I thought I'd write about something always present in the library, though rarely examined.  My thoughts about the keyboards in the library started when I began to simply sit and listen.  One sound that never stops in the first floor of the library is the keystrokes all across the room.  How many students have used those keyboards? How many late-night papers typed?  How many are used to surf Facebook between classes, or to quickly print out an assignment, thanks to the lack of printer ink at home?

These keyboards have had a lot of use, and that use isn't slowing down.  While few people walk into the library expecting to hear the clicking of keys throughout the room, that sound definitely characterizes the space more than the sound of a page turn.  Funny isn't it, that a library, known for its books, would be more utilized for its computers?

spacial map.

I sketched out the first floor of the Bunch library as I sat, taking field notes.  It's amazing to see the concentration of people in the room.  In my map, X's are where people are sitting.  This obviously changed during my time spent in the library, but I marked locations at one time.  While I was there, I saw no one venture past a bookshelf.  It's like only half of the room is used: the half with computers and no books.  People were clustered around the tables with computers, though a few (including me) sat at tables in the middle of the room.  Most of these (again, including me) were on laptops.  The round tables marked 'iMacs' have no people at them, likely because, according to the blue papers taped to each, they are "Not in Use...yet! But set up is almost complete!"  It will be interesting to see if these are as popular as the older PC's, once they are up and running.

Once I draw out the physical location of people in the room, I see that the actual use of the room may not match the intended use of the room.  Yes, students are present.  But they are rarely even physically near the books that are present.  I remember one girl sitting at the table in the back of the room (top left circle on my map), but it was almost as if she was using the bookshelves as a barrier between her and the outside world.  Her defense: no one would dare get too close, for fear of touching a book when a keyboard would suffice.

My map is by no means to scale, but I did the best I could from my vantage point in the middle of the room.