Chapter 4. University Students’ Information Strategies: From Institutional
4.3. Relating use and environment
In fact, the availability of a computer, or more precisely of various types of resources, explains, to a great extent, the way in which students organize their workday at the university. Many of them live a long way from the campus and must thus optimize their time on-site. As the great majority (95%) own a personal computer, they prefer working at home. Yet most of the electronic services, like CDROMs or electronic journals, are available only on the local network, on site at the university. Students must thus determine the location best suited to meet their needs. In addition, certain resources can be reached only from specifically defined areas on the campus. These technical choices clearly show the institutional vision of what students’ activities should be within the given perimeter of each access area.
In order to illustrate the way in which students turn these institutional and technical contexts to their own advantage, we chose to study two locations on campus from which students can access electronic resources. Our aim was to discover their “tactics” as Michel de Certeau [CER 90] has described the ordinary uses constructed “against” prescriptive pressures. Our perspective differs somewhat however from de Certeau’s, whose model suggests a polarized opposition between the “dominant” and “dominated” and thus tends toward the construction of preconceived scenarios of use, such as, in our case, the notion that students are
“subjected” to certain limitations which they manage to “twist” to their own advantage. However, we wished to consider students’ behavior as consistent and corresponding to a real “strategy” even if such strategies are actually quite different from what is expected of them by the institution. Use of electronic resources, in the situations that we were given to observe, can indeed be seen as resulting from compromise and from constant adjustment between institutional demands and students’ requirements.
The first observation site is a small area, located in the main library, in close proximity to the old “subject” and “author” card catalogs. It is a narrow row of tables with eight computers placed side by side, from which students can access the OPAC. As shown in Figure 4.1, this area was designed to fit the greatest possible number of computers into its small and confined space. PCs are so close to one another that less than the width of a sheet of paper separates two keyboards. The lighting is poor and there are no printers. The close proximity to the old card catalogs is quite interesting for two reasons. Representative of the “traditional” and older method of offering access to the library collections, the catalogs suggest to users that the nearby computers are an extension of their function. In addition, this proximity illustrates the priority given by the librarians to user catalog searches in general, especially since the row of PCs is dedicated to this sole task.
University Students’ Information Strategies 51
Figure 4.1. The OPAC querying zone at the University of Lille main library
For students, who have access to other more convivial work spaces, this is a transit area and none of them stay for very long. Regular users drop by to cross- check data found elsewhere or to note the references of the book they wish to borrow. Others simply “come to have a look” as they told us during interviews.
Some students do not anticipate the need to write something down, as they do not even have a pen. A free daily newspaper, handed out in the subway, or a library form, is used to jot down a few words.
Computers are polyvalent tools and their presence inside the library can be interpreted in many different ways. In terms of use, we can roughly distinguish between two main types of behavior: in the first case, the person gives priority to the location over the potentialities of the technical object. She links the presence of computers to her representation of the function of the library and her intended use corresponds to the perceived enunciation of the place “saying”: “I am a library”.
She gives meaning to the computers as library tools and her project is thus consistent both with this vision and with the students’ goals as foreseen by the institution. By contrast, for others, only the computers matter, independently of the surrounding environment or setting. These users consult the computers in order to see “what I
52 Digital Libraries
can do with them”. They bring with them expectations of use which are not necessarily related to the fact that the PCs are in fact “here” in the library. The
“perceived” possible uses are thus different according to whether we take into account the setting and, consequently, the institution, as a frame and a prescriptive authority or whether the computer, in and by itself, works as the sign of multiple openings to various types of activities. However, students quickly learn that the
“instruction leaflet” pertaining to the computers on the Lille campus is strongly linked to its location. However, the complexity and multiplicity of rules and the heterogenity of the facilities seem to explain the second described type of behavior.
The “come and have a look” strategy is prevalent at the university, where students find that institutional rules and expectations are rarely made explicit.
Another location on campus illustrates how students use the equipment at their disposal, adapting their practices to various technical constraints in order to create their own “digital workspace”. An open access computer room, equipped with 30 computers, is connected to a network which for security reasons is separate from the main network. The “intra-network” cannot be reached from outside the university.
Students are allotted limited storage space that is thus accessible only from inside the campus. Printing is not possible from these computers. These particular choices result from a complex mix of political incentives4, technical requirements and financial opportunities (French universities are financed through annual subsidies determined by enrolments, as well as, on a more variable basis, through the financing of projects or priorities). Moreover, although a target ratio of one computer per twenty students was set for 2006, actual ratios are still far below this level. As a result, regulations are very strict and students’ access to workstations is limited to one hour. These limited sessions make it difficult for students to plan long term work or to immerse themselves in complex demanding projects. However, we found that the students here are quite busy and that they often carry out several tasks at a time: web-searching, emailing, word-processing. A sense of real urgency is manifest in this hub of activity, exacerbated by the presence of impatient students queuing up in front of the door during the busiest moments of the day.
Since students generally have access to computers in quieter places (at home or at their parents’ or friends’ houses) they do not necessarily make use of this computer room for the PCs themselves. Instead, they come in order to use the particular resources to which they gain access here, either through the local network or by transporting their own files. The computer thus serves as a network relay point: a group project report can be finalized when the contribution of each member has been retrieved from individual mailboxes. A paper is saved on a personal storage space so as to be retrieved and printed in another computer room where a printer is available but where computers have no USB ports. Documents constantly pass from
4 Mainly based on the leitmotif “France must fill its technical gap”.
University Students’ Information Strategies 53 one point of the network to another. USB drives and emailing are the main technical solutions adopted for these transfers. The thumb-drives – that are also MP3 players – prove very useful for sending files from one computer to the other in the same room even though the PCs are connected to high speed networks. They thus constitute a kind of “digital backpack”. E-mail has also taken on the innovative function of a
“document management system”. Students open various accounts so as to benefit from larger storage space; they create thematic mailboxes and distribute their messages among them. Sorting and finding functions thus make it easy to locate a particular file according to criteria such as date, subject or sender. Even multi- versioning is made possible by the “send again” option. Students have thus constructed remarkably efficient working spaces and file management systems, whose functionalities are not so different from the ever-anticipated “digital campus”
political projects.
These practices present a significant evolution with regard to writing and, to a greater extent, university work. Firstly, students now depend to a great extent upon a technical tool which is not as portable as pen and paper. Secondly, they now no longer perceive documents in a material, tangible way. Writing has become more transient, diffuse and somehow less stable than when it was inscribed on a sheet of paper. The loss of a file is an everyday phenomenon and the mere idea of completeness seems superfluous as documents are always in progress, with diverse versions distributed on various storage spots. Above all, the distinction between what is “mine” and what is “theirs” is sometimes rather blurred. This issue goes far beyond the scope of this paper but we hypothesize that the new materiality of texts changes the ways in which students consider the knowledge they produce, consult, or exploit. When displayed on the same screen and sometimes inside the same word- processor frame, texts become so formally similar that the particularity of one’s own contribution seems less apparent. Handwriting is effortless [PIO 05] as compared to typewriting, but our relationship to the text and to knowledge is certainly quite different according to whether you “cut and paste5” or copy out in writing the same piece of text.