By Group 2: Tingting LI, Wenjie ZHOU, Yanan ZHANG, Biyang YU

Prior-investigation of Anzhen Community Library

D1 Before InvestigationWhat are the factors that influence patrons’

cyber power in community library?

Thus, we want to know why and how patrons use or don’t use the on-line service.

Hypothesis of Influence Factors Knowledge background Social Capital or Network Hardware or Software Problem Speed …

Investigation DescriptionWe arrived there about 4:00 and leave at

5:30Interviews with 4 patrons and 1

librarian(there is only one, we call her Ms Li)

Pictures takingMake next visit on Friday (the librarian

invites us because there will be a speech)When we arrived there, the librarian was

being interviewed by CCTV interviewers for the eldly column.

Background Conditions Founded in 2005, 2 librarians included, 2

sites, 70,000 books in all, about 15 computers

Funding almost comes from Community Administration, 1000 new books a year

Free for reading, borrowing and browsing the Internet

No restriction, Anyone with ID card can apply for the credit card.

Open from 9:00 to 12:00 , 13:30 to 17:30; close on Monday

Patrons: 4 interviews

Interviewee

Frequency

Purpose E-browse

Reason for N

Middle Sch Stu

Once 2 weeks

Borrowing only N At home

Shop Supervisor

Too busy to go

Old Patron 1 1-2 h per day

Newspaper reading

N Bad for eyes

Old Patron 2 2h per day News &Mgz Reading

N Not used to

Who are the patrons & what do they do?4 pm: 22 patrons including students and retired,

male and female, reading news or magazines and borrowing or returning; when there are 18 left, 2 are younger than 50 years old and 16 are older

80% retired and 20% youngsters, children younger than 13 are advised to go to the Children Library nearby

For young, 80% prefer borrowing and 20% prefer reading there, there are also some prepare exams

For retired, reading and borrowing are main activities

Computers and On-line Service

No one used computers when we were there(4pm-5:30pm)

Problems with both hardware and software, slow speed, only few go well, no one can fix them (students in vocational high school used to be volunteers); so less and less come for getting on-line

Computer zone used to be popular, especially for young people and children, even when they had to pay 1.5 yuan per hour. Old people came to send or receive e-mails

Few computers work well and few patrons come for computers

Numerous Reading-related ActivitiesReading Day on April.21st

Flow of books (From Chaoyang Dist Lib to Anzhen; From Anzhen Lib to restaurant, outside farmer-workers and so on)

Numerous non-for-profit speeches (e.g. speech on legislation, speech on poets this Friday)

…

Potential Social Network and CapitalMs Li knows many patrons’ backgrounds if he or she

comes there frequently; and most patrons there are frequent ones.

Only when there are few patrons, communications among patrons exist. Chances for them to communicate are few.

Chances for patrons to communicate with Ms Li are abundant; we observed that 3 at least said hello and goodbye warmly to the librarian, 2 pointed out that they like Ms Li and she is perfect.

When the community government prepares to do some publicizing, it will choose the lib as one site.

Anzhen Lib has high reputation in the community, it has numerous contacts not only with residents and outsiders, but also with kindergartens, special schools, schools, shops, restaurants and other institutions

Thoughts on data: IComputers there are still to be fixed, no

one knows when they go well. So the users at present cannot represent the real conditions (Ms Li thinks that when they are fixed, the users will be more)

Random interviews show that the present patrons don’t prefer computers there

So we think that our original research question has to be revised; it is not an appropriate site for cyber power research

Thoughts on data: IIAnzhen Community Lib has done well and

has high reputation in the community, it rewards further research

We haven’t obvious evidence for lib’s support for building patrons’ social network but it is still possible

Library has very strong social network in the community

So we think that our original research question can be revised to what the lib’s social network and capital is.