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Kajian Dalam Bidang Ilmu Perpustakaan dan Informasi: Filosofi, Teori, dan Praktik

UI “hotspot” when in the campus, or other wifi facilities available for free.
CS-1 is greatly helped by WhatsApp, although she feels some services are
still bad because sometimes she can’t open files as the application should
be updated”.
From the observation of lecturers on their research process, CS-1 can
trace information through the Internet network. She can even search out
of print books that are not available in major online stores. She also has
a very good linkage with librarians so that she can get any articles that
cannot be found in the UI database from her colleague librarian in the UI
Library or even Librarians outside UI. Then she sends her search results
to colleagues or research team members. She explains,”. .. I search for the
material even in the invisible web and forward the results to all members of
the team (researchers) to let us have the same knowledge…”. The delivery
of literature among group members is a common practice.
“I also often get the article from friends abroad. We feel embarrassed if
we don’t look for the literature needed for research. I think there is an
unwritten agreement that each (member) must find literature and share
to all members. Each (member) stores in its phonecell (memory). I
store my data and literature in my laptop, server in the desktop in the
office and on the flash disc, for the backups.”
Interviews indicate that friendship is one of the paths to research
interest, balancing more formal efforts to establish research clusters.
Besides, friendship is also one of the points associated with the association
with the “outsiders”.
From the overall explanation above, we can see the general pattern
of WhatsApp’s use. That the utilization of WhatsApp infrastructure as a
virtual space begins with great ideas about an exchange, shared use and
even the storage of knowledge among lecturers. In this case, WhatsApp
is like a discussion room “... which is fun, because we do not have to
go anywhere but we can talk to colleagues who have similar interests for
research. And we even can have a video call with our colleagues, as if we
meet in one room.”

B. Utilization of WhatsApp for transfer information
E-mail used to be a tool most often referred by a researcher if he talks
about the usefulness of computer technology in its activities. In general, it
can be said, e-mail was a continuation of communication between faces
that facilitate the organization of research work. But nowadays WhatsApp
has taken its place.
In the joint research, we still use more face-to-face containers,
we discuss, more often. If we already divide the task, this one person

236 Whatsaap: Virtual Area as a Comunity Hub For UI Lecturers