Behavioral Analysis of Library Patrons

In the academic world, the days preceding Thanksgiving can be best described as a wash. Students expect faculty to cancel classes and students leave town as early as the preceding Thursday. It’s just a rule. Now, as graduate students, we appreciate the underlying meaning behind the fleeing students. To us, it means… easier access to our faculty (who also seem to revel in the missing students), closer parking spots, empty library computers, less traffic in town, fewer (but still some) e-mail excuses about missing class, just to name a few… It would be an understatement to say we spend a lot of time at the library. In truth, we could live here. We have also discovered that in these few days preceding Thanksgiving, the library populous has adopted new etiquette that takes advantage of the decreased numbers. We chose to detail two examples here.

1) Illegal activity: we all remember Napster in its glory days, when music downloads were unquestionably free. Well, that’s not the case anymore. We all know it. In fact, they include it in orientation about how infinite doom will come to the student who downloads illegal copies of ANYTHING using campus internet. So, observing someone watch an illegal copy of New Moon (which has only been in theaters for a week) on the computer was mind boggling. Given the orientation session we all experienced, it was almost assumed that we too would be kicked out for being in proximity to said illegal activity.

2) The Sleeper: We’ve all fallen asleep at the library. Don’t deny it, you have too. However, there is a line, it’s not even a fine line, between nodding off while reading (of course catching your head before it hits the desk) or putting your head down on the desk for a few minutes, and crawling under the desk, using the chairs as a barrier, your coat as a pillow and light-shield, and SNORING for two hours (at least). See figure 1 for a detailed example.

Figure 1. Sleeper


So to our library comrades out there. Thanks for an entertaining evening!