By Anne Burt
Two neon-orange signs posted at the entrance to BYU''s Center for Instructional Design request the attention of students, faculty and visitors.
The homemade signs are frank -- Offices Only: No Restrooms, No Auditorium, No Classrooms.
The CID administration is not trying to be unpleasant. But three years after CID''s relocation to the southeast corner of the remodeled Harold B. Lee Library, answering the same questions got rather mundane.
'Before that time, of course, there was access all the way through the library so people were assuming that this was an access,' said David Monsen, assistant director for CID.
Two years after CID''s move to the renovated library, the employees posted the neon-orange signs. The signs have been up for one year. However, CID receptionist Jennifer Ball said the bright signs still don''t stop two to three people a week from asking the questions the signs are intended to answer.
A few people come in just to tease.
'People come in here and say ''so, are there any restrooms, auditoriums or classrooms?''' said Ball, 18, from Washington and majoring in linguistics.
The restrooms, auditorium and classrooms are located on the southwest entrance of the library, to the left of CID''s southeast entrance.
Monsen said CID gets more questions during summer programs, like Education Week and Women''s Conference, from people who are unaware that the library can no longer be entered from both the north and south entrances.
Monsen also said many people with ties to BYU come to visit campus to remember their experience at the university.
'The library looks similar on this side, but you can''t get through,' Monsen said. 'So it piques a lot of curiosity - ''why have you done this?'''
CID is a source of instructional design to help educate BYU students and train student employees in a professional work environment. The facility also holds seminars for professors to help them improve education, such as how to run software packages. However, because of CID''s central location, the facility now seems to be taking the added responsibility of an unofficial campus directory.
Ball said the first week of spring semester she kept AIM open at her receptionist desk because so many students came in looking for computer access to find the classroom number they forgot.
'People come in here and ask for directions a whole lot,' Ball said. 'I suppose we can''t put up a sign that says ''we don''t give directions.'''
Not only does Ball give directions and help with misplaced classroom numbers, she also answers questions about the nearest courtesy phone, drinking fountains and pencil sharpeners -- pencil sharpeners?
'Finals week we get lots of people in here asking about pencil sharpeners on their way down to the testing center,' Ball said.
Ball does not have a pencil sharpener on her desk.
Meanwhile, on the inside of the library, other employees are continually answering the same questions for disoriented people looking for CID and the auditorium and classrooms.
One to two people a day comes into the Copyright and Licensing Office, located in the rear of the library''s third floor, trying to get to CID or the classrooms, said Robin King, administrative assistant for the Copyright and Licensing Office.
Each semester the library staff places large poster board signs, accompanied with explanatory maps of how to find CID and the classrooms, at the main entrance of the library and outside the Copyright Office. Like CID''s neon-orange signs, the poster boards and maps are meant to redirect perplexed people to the library''s south side where they can the facilities they are looking for, King said.
King said even with the poster-board signs, some people don''t understand that they can''t get to CID through the library''s main entrance. She said she sometimes has to knock on her back wall and explain that she is knocking on CID''s wall, but there is no way to get to CID or the auditorium unless a person goes outside the library''s main entrance and walks all the way to the south side of the library.
'A lot of people have problems with directions,' King said. 'They don''t have a sense of direction with north and south.'