NC State University Libraries Facilities & Technologies Overview

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Library facilities at NC State University include two main libraries—the D. H. Hill Jr. Library and the James B. Hunt Jr. Library—as well as the Harrye B. Lyons Design Library, the Natural Resources Library, and the William Rand Kenan Jr. Library of Veterinary Medicine.

Key spaces include:

  • Visualization spaces for large-scale display, audiovisual simulations, or immersion in virtual environments
  • Incubator spaces for exploring new technologies
  • Makerspace, with 3D printers and scanners, a laser cutter, electronics, and wearables
  • The Landing for scholarly presentations, creative multimedia projects, exploring data, and collaborative coding exercises
  • Digital media editing and production facilities, including green screens and sound effects
  • An immersion theater and several large video walls for panoramic display of faculty and student work
  • Learning and research commons, top destinations for study and collaboration

High-technology research and learning spaces:  The NC State University Libraries provides spaces for high-definition visualization, simulations, ideation, and innovation. These spaces accommodate various projection and display configurations; real-time video capture, broadcast, and collaboration; and flexible furnishings to support a wide range of scholarly activities. 

Faculty research and collaboration:  Faculty Research Commons are available at both the Hill and Hunt libraries. They each offer reservable workrooms, focus rooms, various open seating configurations, and a technology-equipped conference room. At the Hill Library, faculty members and doctoral students can also be assigned the use of a private research study room for a semester.

Technology lending: The library lends electronic devices, including laptops and tablets, digital cameras and camcorders, digital voice recorders and audio production equipment, projectors, graphing calculators, and a variety of maker kits and components.

Description of Spaces, Technologies, Collaboration, and Support

The NC State University Libraries’ two main libraries feature an array of spaces, technologies, and services supported by highly skilled librarians.

The James B. Hunt Jr. Library, which opened in January 2013, is among the most technologically sophisticated libraries in North America. As a building, an integrated technology environment, and a suite of services, the Hunt Library is an innovative model for the research library as a high-technology research platform, an essential enabler of faculty and student success, and a competitive advantage for the 21st-century university. Among the Hunt Library’s numerous awards is the prestigious 2014 Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Libraries (SPIRL). Focused on the core technologies of visualization, presentation, and interactive computing, this building is designed as a laboratory for supporting faculty research with cutting-edge technologies.

A team of disciplinary librarians, technicians, programmers, and systems engineers supports research activities in unique environments at the Hunt Library, such as:

  • Teaching and Visualization Lab
    • High-definition visualization and simulation
    • Seamless 210-degree immersive projection with 84 feet of display surface
  • The Landing
    • Community space for scholarly presentations, creative multimedia projects, exploring data, and collaborative coding exercises
    • 19.6’ X 4.4’ Leyard LED video display wall with full-screen touch capability

The D. H. Hill Jr. Library houses the majority of the NC State University Libraries' collection of over 3.4 million titles and offers additional high-technology and collaboration spaces that complement those available in the Hunt Library.

  • The Learning Commons is one of the top student destinations on campus for collaboration, study, and access to technology.
  • The Makerspace gives hands-on access to the emerging technologies of making, enabling students and faculty to work with 3D printing, 3D scanning, electronics prototyping, and other maker tools, and holds frequent maker workshops.
  • The Cyma Rubin Visualization Gallery offers 360-degree projection across four walls to support interaction with visual information and collaboration.
  • The Special Collections Research Center provides access to unique collections that document historical and contemporary aspects of fields of study that are strengths for the university.
  • The Digital Media Lab offers audio production and video editing workstations, a green screen wall for filming special effects, and a softbox lighting kit.
  • The iPearl Innovation Studio focuses on showcasing the innovative work of NC State’s students and faculty and on teaching innovation methods to the campus community.

Collaborative Research and Visualization Spaces

The Hunt Library’s Teaching and Visualization Lab can be reconfigured to adapt to a variety of use cases. It can be leveraged for any phase of a project’s lifecycle, including brainstorming and ideation, early experimentation, collaborative engagement, and public presentations and events. A team of technical and disciplinary specialists provides event and technical consulting as well as custom support for more intensive special projects and research.

The Hunt Library’s The Landing is built around a large display that can be used as is a versatile community space for collaboration and group activities. The room is equipped with a 19.68’ x 4.43’ Leyard LED touch-interactive display that is ideal for scholarly presentations, creative multimedia projects, exploring data, and collaborative coding exercises.. Three sides of the room are snap glass, or smart glass, which can be turned from transparent to opaque with a single touch on the room’s control panel, enabling total privacy for teaching, research, or development needs.

The iPearl Immersion Theater, located just inside the library entrance, features a curved 7x16-ft. video display wall, creating an immersive visual experience. The theater acts as a gallery and show space, offering a visitor to the library an immediate experience of the character of the building and what happens in it, from rich content to interactive applications, seminars, and workshops to research events and demonstration projects. The theater is also a presentation space in which faculty can showcase their research, students can demonstrate their projects, and anyone who has an idea they would like to share can spin up an ad hoc workshop or presentation.

At the Hill Library, the Visualization Studio is a collaborative environment for researchers, students, and faculty that provides an ideal physical space for interacting with visual information. The room contains 12 projectors that display the contents of a single computer screen across four walls in a 360-degree projection environment. The studio also provides the infrastructure to tie in personal laptops, allowing up to four different users to project simultaneously. Because the studio runs on a standard desktop, it can support a wide range of applications and users from a variety of disciplines with varying levels of computer skills. Custom display software is also available, and the room enables videoconferencing and two-way collaboration among remote sites as well.

The Makerspace at the NC State University Libraries

The Makerspace at the Hill Library offers students and faculty hands-on access to the emerging technologies of making, such as 3D printing, 3D scanning, laser cutting, electronics prototyping, wearables, and other maker tools. The Hill Makerspace hosts a robust program of making workshops and training sessions, and its staff collaborates with faculty to design projects and experiences that support curriculum and pedagogy. 

Display Walls and Audiovisual Infrastructure

Display is the cornerstone of the Hunt Library technology program. The library is designed to be an integrated visual environment, with an extensive variety of high-resolution display walls and immersive projection spaces that support a robust program of visualization, presentation, and large-scale display. The integrated design means that each of the display spaces acts as a node along a common backbone and shares centralized high-performance computing, routing, and switching. Each of the major screens can display up to 16 sources simultaneously, making them rich digital canvases for research, collaboration, and teaching. The infrastructure design allows a true any-source-to-any-display architecture to achieve optimal flexibility in the use of the entire building as a research hub. Since all of the major compute infrastructure and display servers are located in the central server room directly across the aisle from the AV switching infrastructure, the design allows a researcher to move between any of the major display environments in the building at will without having to worry about moving their applications and data.

Audio Infrastructure

The Hunt Library has a premium professional audio infrastructure, with three rooms that have 5.1 surround sound, two rooms with 3D sound capabilities, four audio production rooms with full MIDI keyboards, and a local FM broadcast system that allows each of the major display walls to have its own wireless audio to personal devices and portable systems. The building has a fully networked audio system, making it possible to activate any space as an extension of the sound environment simply by activating a network port and plugging in speakers and microphones.