Tucked away in room 131 of the Idaho Commons, the ITS Media Center serves as a fairly unknown student resource.
The center allows students and faculty to check out various forms of technology for use in classes or class projects.
Lee Cantrell, media center supervisor, believes more students would take advantage of the system if they knew it was there.
“This is a really great resource for students and faculty, but a lot of people don”t even know we exist,” Cantrell said.
He said students can check out equipment by providing an authorization form signed by a teacher, while staff and faculty have to provide a budget number in order to cover lost or damaged equipment, and ensure it is used for university functions.
The center provides short-term audiovisual equipment, as well as services to process video and change formats.
Cantrell said the most popular item students check out are the cameras, but they also have many other items.
A few of those items include projectors, projector screens, audio outputs, adapters of many sorts and laptop computers.
The standard checkout period is three days, but Cantrell said they work with students who may need items for a longer period of time.
Journalism and Mass Media professor Justin Barnes said he used the media center as a graduate student, and now recommends his students take advantage of the service.
“A big part of the reason I like those guys so much is when there is something I don”t have, they can provide it,” Barnes said. “Or if I want to buy something, I”ll go ask them about the general costs and where I can buy it, and they point me in the right direction.”
Barnes also said he tells members of the Advertising Team, which he advises, about the services available through ITS media center.
“I tell my students, “Hey, if you don”t have this, you can go over to the ITS media center to check the devices or cords out, and use them as a resource,”” Barnes said. “I think just letting them know that it”s there is pretty helpful.”
He said he”s noticed that students with Mac laptops especially appreciate the attachments available to plug in their computers to classroom systems and projectors, even in classes that may only have PC capabilities.
Cantrell said he hopes that once more people know about this program, more people will take advantage of it.
Diamond Koloski can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @diamond_uidaho