Thursday, April 29, 2010

A Safe Library

Now that the tower has wireless access, there is a lot more opportunity for students to work up there.  The prospect of more people working in the tower, plus the 24 hour library during the month leading up to finals, has led to some people wondering about the ways that the library is trying to keep people safe.

So I asked around, and learned several useful things from our security chief.
First, security patrols the entire building every hour, but not necessarily at the same time each hour, because they don’t want to establish a pattern.  When it’s after dark, and they find people by themselves in the tower, they usually add one round on that floor to the usual sweep, to check on that person.  Sometimes, they let the person know that they are alone on that floor, in case they want to move.

There is an emergency button near the elevators on floors 5-8, that can be pressed if there is a need for police/security.  Even if a person does not talk, it’s registered that the button has been pushed, and security has to tell the police not to come, if they find out it’s a false alarm.   Otherwise, the campus police come automatically. 
There are emergency buttons in each elevator, as well.  They look like this:


Our security chief said, too, that this is a very safe library—since the 24 hours experiment has started, there have been no incidents.

Is this your experience of the library?  Did you know about the emergency buttons?  
If your experience is different, please let us know.  Problems unidentified are problems that don't get fixed.

2 comments:

  1. I have noticed as I have come in around 5:00a.m. to 5:30a.m. that many times the security personnel is absent from the post, meaning anyone could have preceded me into the library without presenting a valid ID. I realize the term security is relative also. Other times the security personnel was asleep, head down on the desk, dead to the world, and never knew I came into the library. So much for "real" security as opposed to merely providing security. I think all students should think on this as they enter the library during very early morning hours.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That security employee was a sub-contractor, and has been fired. Please continue to let us know when there are problems.

    ReplyDelete

This blog is being used for research purposes, and your comment may be used in discussions and/or publications regarding research on patron work habits in the Atkins Library.
Please keep comments clean and constructive.