Walk on Past

“When the Pack is out roaring around their territory in Raleigh, they will now be able to carry their group history along for the hunt.”

So say the overly metaphorical PR folks in the NCSU Libraries.

In their tireless efforts to bring the latest technologies to their post-Millennial clients, the libraries have released an innovative tool called WolfWalk that makes it easy to explore the NC State campus and its history. WolfWalk capitalizes on the location awareness of today’s mobile devices to allow users to give themselves a self-guided historical walk.

As users stroll around campus, their mobile devices detect their current locations and then deliver a tour of nearby buildings and other historically interesting locations. Users with devices that don’t support GPS or other location detection, including older iPods, can manually navigate through the site to enjoy a tour of campus.

The initial rollout of the tool provides a brief historical description of over 50 sites on campus and then serves up a range of engaging digitized photographs that shows the sites throughout NC State’s history. WolfWalk is available on many current-generation smart phone platforms, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, and does not require users to download an application. An enhanced version of WolfWalk optimized for iPhones is available from Apple’s App Store.

WolfWalk draws on the resources of the university archives in the Special Collections Research Center, a vast array of documents, photos, audio files and other historical materials from the founding of the school to the present.

Take a WolfWalk