Provost Frank Einhellig recently approved funding in the amount of $23,000 to the MSU Libraries to purchase three pieces of major equipment:

1. Whisper Room (Sound Isolation Enclosure): Whisper Rooms are sound isolation booths that can be used for a variety of purposes, including vocal booths for recording music, voice-overs, podcasts, interviews, and audiology testing. Duane G. Meyer Library installed a One Button Studio for recording presentations and instruction sessions and has yet to provide a space for students to practice and rehearse their projects.  As part of the Libraries’ 2020 project, the sound isolation booth fits our initiative to facilitate Multimedia Culture (1c) and provide Rich Multimedia Spaces (3b).
2. Network-attached storage system  to expand local capacity for original archival storage of born-digital and digitized materials. We are nearing capacity on our existing storage systems and the library is currently undertaking a large video digitization project that will dramatically increase our storage requirements and quickly outstrip our current capabilities. The migration to a new array will also provide us an opportunity to implement improved data integrity an preservation systems.
3. Counter-top Laser Cutter/Engraver: This equipment will give students access to create free-form objects from and engrave various materials, such as wood, metal, and other composite materials for projects in art, design, architecture, construction, marketing, physics, education and more.