As an employee of Campus Information and Visitor Relations here at Cornell University, I have noticed that the job that we students perform is, in reality, to act as gatekeepers for the university itself and provide a local bridge between people who wish to know more about the campus and the information they seek.  Our job at CIVR is basically tri-faceted; we work the information desk in Day Hall, we work the phones for the general university switchboard (254-INFO), and most visibly, we guide the campus tours for prospective students, parents, and other visitors.  At each of these different positions, we act as these “university gatekeepers.” 

When people call in to the general university switchboard, their requests can range from finding information on when tours are to finding information for people on campus and from requests of viewbooks and packets to really obscure questions about things that can only be answered by people in the department specific to the question.  It is part of our training that when we are on the phone we say to people, “I’ll connect you…” rather than “I’ll transfer you…” and we are truly connecting them with the information or person they desire or to the person who will be able to better answer their question.  Part of our and any gatekeeper’s responsibilities are to connect one person (or node) to another. 

At the information desk, employees aid in connecting people to destinations inside of Day Hall to find things they are looking for.  Often, we direct people to the office of the Bursar, the Registrar, or the department of Human Resources.  The desk itself acts as the gatekeeping node between people entering the building and the different offices inside Day Hall.

Finally, as tour guides, student employees of Campus Information and Visitor Relations are the gatekeepers to providing all those on our tours with a plethora of information about Cornell’s history, buildings, ideals, campus, athletics, and academics.  Seemingly hundreds of local bridges are formed between people on the tours and the information about Cornell on virtually every tour we give.  If Cornell University and all the information pertaining to it are viewed as an information network, then tour guides are surely the most visible gatekeepers in the network. 

At the homepage for Campus Information and Visitor Relations, civr.cornell.edu, it is possible to get an idea for the way we gather information about our network quickly in order to answer questions over the phone, at the desk, or after tours.  We are able to search through our people directory, department directory, a program called “Infobase,” and through “Google Cornell.”  Infobase is a program that has a collection of the most searched for information about certain things on campus, like package drop boxes, payphones, or student activities, and organizes them into a searchable and manageable way for people to use as a resource.  This program, along with our directories, allows us as employees to be connected to the entire Cornell information network so that we can act as gatekeepers. 

The link below describes gatekeepers in a network. 

http://proquest.umi.com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/pqdweb?index=0&did=1145080651&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=6&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1209695776&clientId=8424