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Education
American University:
Expanding Information Delivery
Northwest Washington,
D.C.’s American University (AU) has an impressive library: 1,035,000
volumes, more than 1 million microfilms, 36,900 sound recordings, 21,055
electronic journals, 13,600 musical scores, 11,400 films and videos,
2,900 print periodicals, and 65+ newspaper subscriptions. They get a lot
of student traffic for these resources and attending library classes.
“We wanted to present information to people as they enter the library,”
says Evgeny Bisk, Team Leader, Systems for the AU Library. “All we had
was a desktop computer on the front desk running PowerPoints®.”
 After “an excellent
presentation” by a Visix account representative two years ago, Bisk and
his team “saw how easy it is to create, publish, alter and display
content.” They purchased AxisTV Professional, two channel players and a
Software Maintenance & Support Agreement (SMA) through Systems
Integrators, an AV specialist in the Washington area.
“We put up a 42-inch
plasma in the main lobby,” Bisk tells us, “to send information on
library classes and initiatives, library policies – like ‘no cell
phones, please’. Displays point users to the lower levels, where they
can check out laptops if the desktop computers are all full. We also
utilize the Screen Saver option, to communicate if we haven’t caught
them at the entrance.” The screen shows relevant content in three
windows, with a cable feed in a smaller window and weather updates. “We
also liked the emergency ticker option,” continues Bisk. “Students
gather around the display to watch the CNN feed and then they get the
other messages at the same time.”
AU then added AxisTV to
the entrance point in the Anderson Computing Complex, a state-of-the-art
facility with over 160 internet-ready computers and five electronic
classrooms. “The ease of content creation, because it’s web-based, just
couldn’t be easier,” explains Bisk.
An in-house graphic
designer does a lot of the content creation, as does the Webmaster,
mainly using PowerPoint® and custom graphics made in PhotoShop®, with
the occasional Flash® animation. “We also have two or three other people
working on content and may expand soon, to, for example, the reference
desk.”
The AU library is
planning to upgrade include the Web Page Capture option. “I want to show
how many computers are currently free so people will know upon arrival
whether to go to the computing center or head downstairs and check out a
laptop.”
Over the next year, Bisk
hopes to add two more displays on other floors, expand the number of
channel players, add room signs and tie into an event scheduling
software application.
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