The Library

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Arianne Smith (with Baba)

Arianne Smith is our Library Technician. She started volunteering at CKUA in October 2010, then was hired on part time in December. In April she completed her practicum as part of Grant MacEwan University's Information Management Training & Library Technology program, and in May was hired full time.

Prior to being at CKUA, Arianne worked at a pet store, made books at a print shop, sold band T-shirts, and while at HMV in West Edmonton Mall, made sure CKUA got a 10% discount.

The key function of the Library is to make sure announcers have what they need in order to play what they want. This means keeping everything available in working order, and easy to find, whether it be a digital or physical copy.

Arianne says a huge part of maintaining the library is accomplished by volunteers. "We couldn't do it without them."


The "Library" actually refers to a number of rooms - some on the 6th floor, some on the 5th, the Vinyl library on the ground floor that houses all our vinyl, and even some other crannies in the basement. One library area used to be the men's washroom (you can see the tiles above).

During campaign, when a request for a song comes in, the Library Runner takes it to the announcer, in this case Lionel Rault, who looks it over. When he's checked it, he gives it back to the Library Runner, and she goes to find the song.

For much of the Fall campaign, Arianne is the Library Runner. Here she is locating the requested song which happens to be on a Vinyl Album on our first floor. She'll bring it back up to Lionel who will then play it during his shift.

Arianne loves working with such an "eclectic group of people, because everyone is [very] hilarious". She also says "I appreciate getting to see all this music I would not have even been aware of".  

Arianne spends much of her time doing metadata research, such as band biographies and other song-related information. Whether a piece of music is on CD, vinyl, or in any other physical format, the CKUA playback system requires that each song have associated metadata fields completed. This is how our real-time playlist automatically shows the song title, singer, and album.

While Arianne appreciates the extraordinary creativity shown on some CD artwork, she says that graphic designers can get a little carried away (example above). "Yeah it's arty, but what the heck does it say?"