Beneath the floors filled with books and desks is a basement full of helpful resources waiting for students ready to take their studies to the next level. This is the media room in the downstairs of Riley Hickingbotham Library.
The media room might be most familiar to students who have been assigned to view a movie for a class, but students might not be familiar with other resources the media room has to offer. Here students can get help preparing for the MCAT, listen to Christian counseling tapes, take an honors class on Vampire Cults, print from a color printer, get something laminated or gain access to a wide variety of media resources.
Much of the technology you see around campus is provided by Ouachita Media Resources. They are working to purchase and install new technology in the library as well as the rest of campus.
“We are starting to move forward and put up a lot of electric signs on campus for upcoming events,” said Lynn Valetutti, the media coordinator.
Media Resources is working on adding big screens, like the one by the library elevator, to other areas on campus.
Moving forward, they have been able to add some new technology to the library. A cell phone charging station has been installed in the library next to the circulation desk.
“So if you’re here, and your phone’s dying or something, you can plug it in, it’s right in front of the circulation desk,” Valetutti said.
Students can stop by and just take a few minutes to charge their dying phone instead of going back to their dorm room or apartment.
“Some people sit there beside it and like study while they wait,” said Lacy Wolfe, assistant professor and circulation and reference librarian. “Or if you want to be at a computer you’d still be pretty close to it.”
The Library will also soon open a new kind of study room. The room will offer a large monitor that students can plug their laptop and project the screen to help work on projects as a group.
“You can plug in your laptop and you can see it on the monitor, so everyone can see it and work together,” Wolfe said.
The “technology enhanced collaborative space,” as Wolfe calls it, will be a great place to work as a group and practice presentations.
“Especially if you are working on a group project, rather then everyone sitting around one computer, you can see,” Wolfe said.
While the equipment support for our campus is very important, it’s not the most unique thing about the media room. The main specialty of Media Resources is to convert media to a more sustainable, researchable form.
“Nobody else on campus can do this, so it’s kind of like our little niche,” said Valetutti.
Work-study students spend time recording VHSs and cassette tapes to DVDs and CDs. While this might seem boring, this is the most important thing Media Resources does for the campus. The cassette tapes are filled with historic sermons and speeches, “they break so easily, they are irreplaceable, and that’s really the problem,” Valetutti said.
For more information about the library’s media room and the available resources, contact Velatutti through email at valetuttil@obu.edu or visit her office in the library.
