I’ll start by pasting my account of my ethnographic field trip to Strozier:
I spent 20 minutes observing the check-out desk in Stozier Library, from approximately 2:40 – 3:00 on Thursday 2/5/15. I positioned myself on a couch across from the area. At this time, the desk was staffed by three individuals – 2 males and 1 female. M1 – who was stationed at the far-left desk – seemed to be the most senior. I surmise this because other staff asked him for help. Questions apart, though, M1 spent about 15 of the 20 minutes I observed him working with a single patron. The female (F1), although occasionally appearing to be a bit bored, actually checked out more patrons than the other two (M1 and M2). F1 and M2 meanwhile busied themselves with pulling reserved textbooks (about 3 or 4 from what I could tell) for patrons, and putting things away (ruler, highlighter a patron borrowed…). They seemed to be fairly friendly to each other; they didn’t seem to chat with M1 as much again adding to my suspicion that he is sort of the “boss”. All in all, there were approximately 10 patrons total, and approximately the same number of male and female patrons during this period.
*Addendum: As mentioned, although one would assume that I was fairly “invisible” as someone sitting quietly in a library writing in a notebook, at the end of my 20 minutes, one of the library check-out staff (the “boss”) came over to me and said he’d noticed me sitting on the couch for “a while” and wondered if i needed anything or if I was just waiting for someone. Thinking quickly (fortunately, it was at the hour, so I just said “I’m waiting for someone – it’s 3 so they should be here very shortly” – So, I was very nearly busted.
REFLECTION
Now for the “reflection” portion of this posting. Thinking about the different experiences we all had in doing this exercise, it seems fairly apparent that you cannot take anything for granted in attempting an “unobtrusive observation” method of ethnographic study. That is to say, one would have thought that I would have blended right in at the library (although perhaps I look too old to pass for a student studying in the library???) – and yet, the “boss” seems to have picked up *something* that he felt was “not right” so he asked. Perhaps folks are a bit sensitive after the incident last November… or perhaps, being a “library type” he really was just trying to be helpful. On the other hand, witness Ana’s experience: one would have thought that people would have given sort of a sideways glance at someone standing across from a construction site recording notes about her observation on her cell, and yet no one did! So I guess the learning there is that you really can never tell how “unobtrusive” you are (or are not)….
Having said that (which was probably my biggest “ah ha” in this exercise) – I did find it an interesting experience in general to have to mindfully study a group of people and/or location for a period of time. I have volunteered in libraries (even worked in one during law school), so I am obviously somewhat familiar with what I’ll call the “culture” of libraries, so to the extent I made any assumptions about what was going on a given patron, I will credit them as being somewhat educated or at least informed. However, in order to be – if not unobtrusive, at least ‘less obtrusive’), I did have to distance myself somewhat from the area and the people I was observing, so I was unable to hear exactly what was going on – so all I am left with is “informed” assumptions and guesses.
One final point, then I’ll shut up: concerning our discussion in class about giving physical descriptions of the subjects we’re observing. My notes actually did include brief physical descriptions of each of the workers – but when I went to construct the narrative of my observations I intentionally left that out because I didn’t think it really added anything in this particular case… Just wanted to throw that in for what it’s worth.