Background: As part of a graduate-level course, I worked with a team to perform an environmental scan on a local information institution. We worked with KOOP, an Austin co-op radio station, to help visualize their information behaviors and practices and to make recommendations for future information infrastructure improvements. As part of our study; we researched internal and external information pathways at the station, conducted interviews with station staff and listeners, and co-hosted a half-hour live radio segment focused on the information behaviors of radio listeners.

My role: Four our report and presentation, I focused on the internal information pathways at the station, digging deep in to volunteer recruitment and training documents as well as internal training practices. I also analyzed barriers to entry for potential and current KOOP volunteers, including issues of technical and physical access to station resources and language barriers.