Week One: Bearings


Hannah Hiles | 20 Jan 2016 | Durham NC


My first week with DUL's 1) AUX 2) department was a surprisingly easy transition into a number of new realities.

First, the departure of my daily routine as a stay at home mom – getting into the rhythm and groove of office life has been a welcome new environment that I have so far enjoyed. But I've also gotten to slide into something that I've been excited for my during my entire program with LIS – actual library experience!

My site supervisor, Emily Daly, kicked off my week with a few basic requests. My nonexistent relationship with DUL gives me what she (and several others in the department) have referred to as “fresh eyes.” This has led to a few important assignments in regards to user experience; namely exploring the physical and digital spaces of DUL and seeing what stands out.

Exploring the physical spaces of Perkins, Bostock, Rubenstein, and The Edge was like embarking on a 2 hour Willy Wonka-esque field trip – all this magic! And it could all be yours! We are still very early in the Spring semester, and so not all of the spaces have gotten back to their “normal” occupational status. Some areas were much more depleted than others, while some areas looked like they hadn't been inhabited by students in quite some time.

It seems that while part of going through the library's physical spaces were to use my “fresh eyes” and get a sense of the geography of the campus, there was also an added element of “What, exactly, will you see? What issues will stand out to you? Will you see more problems, or will you see more highlights? Will one library in particular strike you as the problem child, or will you see them all equally?”

I also started a brief investigation of DUL's digital space, much in the same vein as the physical wandering – noting what does and does not work, what I do and do not like. I don't get to see how students interact with the digital space in the same way that I can see their interaction with the physical, though. The assumption may be that with digital libraries, all the data that you need is in analytics, but I'm not sure how true that is.

Next week will be my first supervisor meeting, as well as more in-depth looks at my Learning Contract. Who knows what else!


1) Duke University Libraries
2) Accessibility and User Experience