KU Libraries, in conjunction with the Office of the Vice-Provost of Information Services, opened BudigOne, a new digital workspace in late September 2006. Since its installation, BudigOne has grown to offer faculty, graduate students, and researchers a workspace with resources and on-site technical support for their scholarly endeavors. More recently, the lab has acquired newer cutting-edge hardware to further the programs initiative. Information Services (Libraries and Information Technology) and Instructional Development and Support (Office of the Vice Provost) collaborated to create a workspace for digital projects. Located on the first floor of Budig Hall, BudigOne supports and trains KU faculty and graduate students in the development of digital projects for teaching and research. Services are provided by appointment only 8:00am to 5:00pm, Monday-Friday. Faculty and Graduate students may use equipment unsupervised after orientation by BudigOne staff and registering with the IDS reception desk. The staff consults on instructional design, digital concepts and standards, digital production and project management. BudigOne staffers are readily available to help create, enhance and share digital information needed to develop faculty and graduate students' classroom instruction and research. The workspace offers a suite of equipment including scanners, computers, cameras and software to capture digital images, edit still images, audio, and video, tag and mark-up text files and create metadata.
The center is working to foster community among KU faculty and staff. Coming this fall, BudigOne will be hosting workshops on solutions for their digital projects to faulty and staff. According to Holly Mercer, coordinator of digital content, "BudigOne is quickly becoming a place where people come together to work on and share ideas on their scholarly projects."
BudigOne is part of a larger vision for the University of Kansas Libraries. Digital Initiatives, a program of the Libraries and Information Technology, is charged with designing and implementing infrastructure and an integrated suite of services necessary to create, support, display, and preserve scholarly information in a digital format for the University of Kansas, its constituents, and the global scholarly community. The Libraries seek to build partnerships with faculty to create digital content and systems with research or instructional value beyond the lives of the projects themselves, and BudigOne plays an important role in this process.
--Aghayan is a junior studying political science and sociology. He is a student assistant in the Dean of Libraries office.
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Kansas
