New Visualization Studio Turns Heads

The new Visualization Studio at NC State’s D.H. Hill Library was carved out of open space created when books were moved from the second-floor stacks to the new Hunt Library on Centennial Campus.

The unused space was turned into a high-tech studio that is now the only place on campus where researchers can display information in a 360-degree environment. Each of the four walls has three LCD projectors to beam information driven by either a Windows server provided by the library or through VGA and HDMI hookups for up to four standard laptops.

It’s a perfect environment for brainstorming, presenting proposals and projecting complicated data, says Brian Norberg, an academic technologies librarian. There is seating for up to 24 people, with technical assistance available for those new to a multimodal classroom and teaching space.

“Like the Teaching and Visualization Lab in the Hunt Library, the Visualization Studio provides researchers with an immersive space where they can explore new ways to see and experience the data at the core of some of the most innovative work happening at NC State,” Norberg explains.

The room was designed and built by the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) of Chapel Hill, which built its first social computing room in 2007 at UNC.

“There are low barriers to entry for this studio because it operates with a standard Windows desktop,” says Sidharth Thakur, a senior research data software developer with RENCI. “It’s designed to let people display a lot of information with multiple images with a 360-degree view.

“There’s no other place on campus to do that.”

In fact, its view even surpasses the Hunt Library’s Teaching and Visualization Lab, which has a 270-degree display across three walls.

The Visualization Studio is located on the second floor of the D.H. Hill’s south stacks next to the Unity Lab and can be reserved through the NCSU Libraries online scheduling system.