Odegaard Computing Commons as an Information Ground
The computing commons, located at the second floor of the Odegaard library, fosters a spontaneous and serendipitous sharing of information. Most people go to the technology center with the purpose of using a computer to finish a task or entertain themselves rather than information sharing. However, both the social and technological interactions that occur in this location, allow for a rich flow of information, making the computing commons an interesting information ground. What makes this place even more interesting than other information grounds is that although students in this facility are encouraged to be quiet and to limit their conversation, they do tend to ignore this rule and make efforts to share information among themselves.
An information ground is a place where people exchange and share information. Odegaard is very useful information ground because it is a central location in the academic and social life of the members of University of Washington, and though students or visitors come in with personal purposes they end up sharing information or getting their information need fulfilled.
Not only does it provide a lot of great resources for students to use, but the environment and this availability of resources tends to help create information incidents and leads to often times unintentional sharing of information. One example of this is for example when students see other students using specific equipment and ask about it to the help desk consultants. Though the computing commons is not as common form of an information ground that people think of upon hearing the words “information ground”, there is no double that there is a lot of information sharing and incidents that do occur in this location and that there is a lot of information being passed around. The availability of computers and the internet just adds another dimension to information sharing.
A small change to the environment will help the information ground to facilitate more information flow. People come to computer lab for many different purposes. Having the grouped lab station organized in a manner to better relate to these purposes will promote more information flow. For example, grouped station can be categorized into quiet area where there are people who does not want to be distrusted by others.
During our research, students claim that when they ever come in group to the library, they tend to bring friends who have the same purpose of coming to the library with them. Being around the people who have same purpose will lead the students to be more comfortable in the environment they are in. Having more group stations will facilitate the information flow. In the past few months, the staff of Odegaard commons has been working towards this goal by adding more collaboration studios and desks with laptop hookups but there is still a lot of work to be done in this direction.
One unique aspect of this information ground is that it combines two very different types of information ground. As mentioned above, the Odegaard commons combines the power of computers with a dynamic social environment that facilitates information sharing. This is what makes the commons especially unique when compared to other information grounds. The whole setup can looked at as a mashing of two information grounds – the information ground that is the internet as a whole and the physical setting of the library. With such a vast source of information readily available to the users through the internet, the information incidents and sharing that occurs has a greater variety and lets the people physically located in this one information ground communicate with people in many different locations and information grounds. With the availability of internet, the way time effects information is also altered. There can be information incidents in the computing commons without the people involved being there at the same time. The flexibility and broadness of the information available in the Odegaard computing commons make this place a very cool information ground.
Hasmik Kalantarian, Wendy Lee, Nathan Larsen, Charles Ko, Algernon Carpena