New library slated for technology advances

Upon the completion of the newly renovated library there will be many new technological advances for students to take advantage of.

Approximately $400,000 will be invested to equip the new library with new computers and printers.

“Computers are one thing NOT included in the building fund,” said Chad McDonald, campus computer support services director. “We know we will have to put the package together from several sources.”

The new library will be equipped with new computers and printers for student use. Also, a state of the art media and graphics lab will be installed for use by students who have a reservation.

“The library has been built to accommodate about 160 “public access” computers available for student use in the computer lab area of the ground floor,” said McDonald. “Included also is a state of the art graphics lab (available only to students and only by reservation) using high end PC and Apple computers in conjunction with cutting edge video and sound editing software (Pro Tools, Final Cut Pro 4, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Photoshop to name a few).”

McDonald added that a good deal of digital items would be in the new library.

“Digital tablets, large format scanners, digital mixing boards, preview monitors, CD/DVD players/recorders, VCRs, CD and cassette players, headphones, a plotter, and many other technologies. There will be an Apple classroom and 3 PC based computer labs, each with access to printers and discipline specific software.”

Another nice perk to the opening of the new library will the addition of another 24-hour lab and the addition of a cyber caf? for students to use while writing papers for hours at a time.

“All labs in the library will be available 24 hours a day. We will expand up on the existing technology in the library by adding dozens of workstations with access to the internet, Galileo, and various online journals, said McDonald. “The library will introduce a cyber caf? and a graduate study area immediately adjacent to the labs to help with those long nights at the keyboard. Specially designed workstations scattered throughout the library were built to accommodate the needs of workgroups or teams. New furniture in the library will also provide a better use of desktop space at computer terminals, so that you can actually open textbooks on top of the desks, rather than having cramped spaces as we have in a few locations around campus.”

With the new library having so many options technology wise, there are talks of putting new focus on some of the remaining labs on campus.

“Consolidating many currently available services into a widely accessible location such as the new library will allow us to make better use of some public lab spaces across campus, perhaps converting them to teaching labs,” said McDonald. We should also realize some degree of overhead savings through this consolidation of services, which is particularly important in this time of shrinking budgets.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 25 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry