Last spring, Pamela Pollard of Media Services and Norine Duncan
of the Art Slide Library proposed the establishment of a small,
multimedia laboratory for instructional support. Faculty at Brown,
they felt, needed access to state-of-the-art equipment for preparation
of course materials in a facility that also provided guidance in
the use of the necessary hardware and software. Thanks to the generosity
of a donor, Eleanor H. Gimon, a former member of the Corporation
and its Library Committee, renovation of a space for the Libraryâs
new lab began in September and equipment was ordered.
The multimedia lab is located on the twelfth floor of the Sciences
Library and is expected to be operational in the spring of 2001.
Its purpose is to provide equipment for use by faculty (or their
proxies) who want to do scanning and editing work themselves, as
part of projects related to instruction or research at Brown. The
content may be an original creation or a reformatting of existing
resources from the Libraryâs collection or other sources. When necessary,
Library staff will advise on copyright considerations.
The new facility will complement the Multimedia Lab at the Graduate
Center and its new satellite facility in List Art Center, which
are administered by CISâs Scholarly Technology Group. Rather than
serving classes of students directly, the Lab will provide a place
for hands-on, advance preparation of course materials. It will also
be available for use by Library staff, and student access to the
lab will be permitted if the required equipment is not in use by
faculty or staff.
Training at the Lab will initially be handled by Kitto Weikert,
a Media Services staff member, with assistance from an intern from
the University of Rhode Islandâs Graduate School of Library and
Information Science. At first, the hours of access will be limited
to twenty hours per week, the exact schedule to be announced. At
the end of the spring semester, the extent of the demand will be
assessed. If warranted, hours of operation may be expanded and staffing
increased.
The Lab features two workstations, one for scanning, one for video-editing.
To capture content for projects, digital still or video cameras
may be borrowed from Media Services. The latter is a DV (Digital
Video) camera that is capable of direct importation of video into
the computer editing system through FireWire.
The scanning station will process hard-copy source materials. The
flatbed scanner will accommodate up to tabloid-size (12 inches by
17 inches) materials at high resolutions, and the slide scanner
will produce versions of film slides and negatives at even higher
resolutions. Optical character recognition and image manipulation
software will also be available.
Taking advantage of groundbreaking new technology from Apple Computer,
the video- editing station will feature high quality capabilities.
Users will be able to achieve near broadcast quality results when
using footage shot with a DV camera, and will also be able to convert
footage from traditional analog tape formats such as VHS. Finally,
users will be able to output to tape formats (DV, VHS) or compress
finished video projects to files for delivery over the Internet
or on CD-ROM.
The Lab staff will offer their technical expertise in planning projects.
Anyone who wishes to use the lab for a project should contact Media
Services by e-mail at 
mediaservices@brown.edu
(x3-2197).
Eleanor H. Gimonâs gift enabled the Library to take quick action
to meet a perceived need. The Lab bearing her name is a first step
toward the goal of a greater Library contribution to classroom instruction,
especially through the reformatting of selected items from its collections
for electronic delivery to students.
---Nori Duncan, Curator of the Art Slide Library & Pam Pollard,
Head of Media Services
http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/University_Library
