By Group 2: Tingting LI, Wenjie ZHOU, Yanan ZHANG, Biyang YU Prior-investigation of Anzhen Community Library

D1 Before Investigation What 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 Description We arrived there about 4:00 and leave at 5:30 Interviews with 4 patrons and 1 librarian(there is only one, we call her Ms Li) Pictures taking Make 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 IntervieweeFrequencyPurposeE-browseReason for N Middle Sch StuOnce 2 weeksBorrowing onlyNAt home Shop SupervisorToo busy to go Old Patron 11-2 h per dayNewspaper readingNBad for eyes Old Patron 22h per dayNews &Mgz ReadingNNot 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 s Few computers work well and few patrons come for computers

Numerous Reading-related Activities Reading Day on April.21 st 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 Capital Ms 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: I Computers 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: II Anzhen 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.