Technology in the Taylor Family Digital Library

The Taylor Family Digital Library’s unique features and resources come alive with technology that encourages experiential learning, exploration and innovative ways of creating new knowledge, making the Taylor Family Digital Library one of the most information-rich facilities in Canada.

• In the Learning Commons, visitors have 24-hour access, five days a week, to over 200 computer workstations with 100 per cent wireless and cellular coverage.
   
• Collaborative work spaces are equipped with large wall-mounted flat screens and ergonomic furniture. Students book rooms via touch-screens located on every floor. Presentation rooms with ceiling-mounted cameras allow students to playback their presentations to review their performance.
   
• Screens above the reference desk will show visitors how many people are using the library at one time and how many people are using our digital collections at any given time. Users can automatically check out and return items and students can get help from roving students providing peer-to-peer help.
   
• In the café area, touch-tables allow visitors to browse through a digital copy of The New York Times, play with a digital sketchbook, or leaf through images of the amazing and rare collections in the Library’s holdings.
   
• On the main floor, eight LCD panels are banked together on a wall with directional speakers and a touch table lectern to allow students to present and work on their own projects, keep up to date with major news events, or challenge each other in a spectacular gaming event.
   
• The most technically advanced arts museum in the country, the Nickle Galleries will have state-of-the-art design and rich technical support inviting multi-media artists to use the space in dynamic new ways.
   
• For the visual and performing arts enthusiasts, students can access over a million licensed digital images as well as the 67,000 images in the Library’s own collection. Suites allow small group or individual work in editing, shooting film, animation 3-D rendering, and sound. A hardware “sandbox” includes a large touch table and digital globe on which students can project their research on anything from immigration patterns to climate change and ocean currents and musical influences.
   
• The Taylor Family Digital Library has the largest retro gaming collection in Canada. A special area allows you to step back into the gaming world of the 1970s and 1980s and try your hand at everything from a Telegames Pong system to new classic style games such as Guru Meditation played on the ATARI using a balance board peripheral. The classic systems will be joined by all of the modern systems with a space designed so that the user can take full advantage of the motion sensing capabilities.
   
• A special visualization room on the fourth floor allows professional research to be displayed in detail on a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall high resolution screen with high quality surround sound. Astronomers can explore deep space and the mysteries of the Aurora Borealis in new detail or a geologist can map out soil sample data and discover new patterns.