It’s happened to everyone. You’re panicking, clutching your flash drive between white knuckles, desperately searching for a computer. Your desktop at home crashed, but not before you saved your paper onto the jump drive. Now, class begins in 15 minutes, and you still have some errors to correct. You run into the computer lab in Steely Library and – every machine is occupied.
Don’t worry. There are seven other labs to choose from.
“Not everybody has a laptop and even if they do, they may not want to take it out just to look up something or print a paper,” said Chris Walker, a sophomore computer information technology major, who works in the computer labs.
Of the eight labs, two are in Steely Library and three are in Founders Hall. All the labs have PCs with Windows on them, though only Steely Library contains Macs.
According to the NKU’s Information Technology Web site, Founders Hall has two labs and Steely Library has one that are designated as “reserve labs,” which means professors can set aside the rooms for classes. Otherwise the labs are open to all students to use during their office hours, which can be found at IT’s Web site, www.nku.edu/~it.
The other labs are classified as “open,” meaning that they’re always available to students.
Steely’s labs also have assistants to help users with any computer problems. Adam Phillips, a freshman mathematics and computer science major, is one of them. He said that student employees sit ready to “answer the calls to the calls to the help desk and make sure the place doesn’t get trashed.”
Outside of Steely, frustrated computer patrons can call ext. 6911 in order to receive assistance from IT.
As for the labs being too busy, Walker said that the labs in the Business, Education and Psychology Building is the most popular.
“We always have to make paper runs there,” he said.
Phillips said that the labs’ occupancy varies widely. However, weekdays, including Fridays, are the busiest.
Lab Hours
Monday – Thursday
7:30 a.m. – Midnight
Friday
7:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Saturday
11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday
12:30 p.m. – Midnight
Lab Locations
FH 421
FH 423
1st Floor SL 4th Floor SL
FH 430
BP 312
SL 235
SC 400