31 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 289 2016 it have some sort of gun in it? Again we didn’t know, but our feeling of responsibility to the students and campus took precedence and drove us to stay by the doors to let stranded students in. Waiting…and Not Knowing What News to Believe After the second of the two initial Bruin Alert messages, communication from the campus went silent. There was no further official information after 9:53 a.m. until a message at 11:24 a.m. indicating that the “lockdown continues.” The same message was repeated 20 minutes later and also advised others to “not come to campus.” In Powell Library we tried to call the campus police to find out what they wanted us to do in terms of adhering to the lockdown, but when we finally got through after roughly half an hour on hold, their advice was to “use your best judgment.” In the meantime, we were all using our cell phones and other devices to try to learn more about what was happening, although getting a strong cell phone or Wi-Fi signal became increasingly difficult as time passed. Some of us tuned into local news television feeds, while others relied on social media to get information. Family and friends texted messages, a number of which contained updates from news coverage they were seeing. Rumors were rampant: “There are groups of men dressed in black with guns roaming the campus “It’s a single shooter dressed in black “Multiple people have been killed and “Shots have been fired in other buildings on campus.” The Los Angeles Police Department received a report of “shots fired at Young Research Library” at 10:47 a.m., and at 11:19 a.m. there was a “second hand report of shots heard at Young Research Library, 5th floor.” Finally, after what seemed an interminable wait, at 12:12 p.m. a Bruin Alert was sent giving the “all clear” message. Unfortunately the Bruin Alert system was not robust enough to handle the messaging load, so in some cases it took more than 10 minutes for a text to arrive. This was especially distressing when people were standing in groups and some received the message long minutes before the others.
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