Alexis teaches her friend how to find a book in the Ingram Library. She explains that you first need to access the university's homepage and click on the library hyperlink at the bottom of the page. This will take you to the library catalog, which is a record of all the books in the library. You can search by title, author, or subject to find available books. The book's record will display its call number and location in the library. Alexis and her friend use this process to find a book on serial killers for the friend's criminology class paper.

1. Library EthnographyLibrary Ethnography
Observation and Interview

2. I asked my friend Alexis to
teach me how to find a book
at the Ingram Library. The
first thing she said was we
needed to find an available
computer or go to the
computer located near the
help desk, that is used to find
books. When we got to a
computer she told me I
needed to go to West
Georgia’s home page,
www.westga.edu.

3. Alexis then explained once you
are on the university’s home
page you scroll to the bottom
of the page. At the bottom of
the page you see a column
labled academics and
underneath this column there
is a Library hyperlink. I asked
Alexis what a hyperlink was
and she demonstrated that
when clicked it will bring you to
a knew website.

4. When you click the hyperlink it
takes you to the Ingram library
homepage which has the library
catalog on it. I asked Alexis what a
catalog was and what they used it
for. She responded, “A catalog is
a record of something, in our case
it is a record of all the books
Ingram Library has. The catalog
allows us to locate books within
the library and know whether the
book has been checked out to
anyone.” Since I did not
understand the meaning of
checking out a book Alexis went
into detail how you are allowed to
borrow a book for a certain
amount of time and then it must
be returned back to the library.

5. Alexis explained that once
at the catalog you can
choose to look up books,
articles, or research
guides. Since I needed to
find a book for a research
paper I am writing for one
of my criminology classes,
she selected the books
tab. I chose to write my
research paper on serial
killers. Therefore, she
typed serial killers into the
search engine and then
clicked search.

6. After searching the
term “serial killers” a
list of several different
books on this topic
appeared. I found the
first book to be
interesting and asked
Alexis how I could find
more information
about it. She simply
stated that if I clicked
on the book I could
find out the author,
similar books, and
whether the book was
available.

7. After pulling up the information on the
book titled Serial Killers by Joel Norris
Alexis pointed to a box that said
“holdings”. In this box it tells you
whether the book is checked out or not
and what the book’s call number is.
Alexis told me that the call number was
how the library organized its books, so
it was very important to write the
number down. In addition the “holdings”
box says that A-H call numbers are
located on the second floor and J-Z are
located on the third floor. Alexis pointed
out since Ingram Library has so many
books it has multiples floors to store
them all and on each floor it becomes
quieter, making it easier for students to
study.

8. The call number of the book
started with a “H” so we made
our way to the second floor.
Once on the second floor we
found the section containing the
books with call numbers HF-HX.
I was curious to how Alexis
knew where to find this section
on the second floor and she told
me that there are signs on the
end of each book shelf that help
you to locate the book you are
looking for. She also said that
there were many maps or
library assistants that would be
willing to help you locate a
book.

9. After a couple of minutes of
looking for the section our book
was in, we found the correct
section. On this section we had to
find the books with the same first
four numbers as the call number
we had recorded on a piece of
paper. As soon as we found
books with the same number we
quickly were able to narrow it
down to a few books. Then we
found the book we were looking
for. Learning how to find a book in
Ingram Library was a knew and
fun experience. I hope someday I
will also be able to teach
someone how to find a book in
the library.

10. I also asked Alexis how she learned to find a book
and she told me she went to the desk with a library
assistant and upon asking for some help she was
able to help her look up and find the book she was
looking for.