Passing through the lanes in the library’s computer commons area, it’s hard to find a person not typing a comment or scrolling down the colorful profile of a MySpace member.

A growing number of people are logging onto MySpace.com at both home and at school as a way of communicating with friends, family and coworkers. At last count, there are more than 2,000 profiles on the Web site for people who list themselves as current students of Bakersfield College, and the library’s computer commons area seems to have been overtaken by people who are using the site.

In an informal survey of 29 people using computers in the commons area, 22 of them use MySpace, 17 of which were using it at the time of the poll.

“Like half the people here are on MySpace,” said 22-year-old Peter Juarez as he glanced across the commons area. Juarez uses the site to kill time and has found old friends on the site.

The site allows people to have immense freedom in customizing their pages. In addition, they can write a blog, which is a type of public Web journal. People can join groups and search for friends using a wide range of search parameters. Many people use the site to find old high school classmates or network with current ones. Mariann Hasty, 18, for example, found an old friend on MySpace.

“It felt really good to find him. He went away for school,” Hasty said. “Its nice to talk to him.”

According to Jim McGee, BC director of Information Services, there isn’t a problem with people using the computers for MySpace or anything else that does not disturb others.

“As long as the commons are not full, I have no objection to people using the computers for their own pleasure,” McGee said.

McGee added that they do bump people off computers when the commons are full, but it is very hard to figure out who is doing schoolwork and who is not.

“It is very, very difficult to discriminate when you are out there between people who are looking at Web sites for their own entertainment as opposed to surfing for a class assignment,” he said. “People listening to music could be music students, people looking at anatomy could be nursing students.”

Although many use the computer commons for fun, only two out of the 29 people surveyed said that they don’t use the computers for schoolwork at all. In addition, a majority of them said that they use the commons more for schoolwork than they do for fun.