Labs & Equipment

The CDS houses a Digitization Lab and a Critical Making Lab, which are multi-use spaces that house specialized equipment and software to be shared by the CDS community. They are available for use by all CDS affiliates, 24 hours a day. Outside of business hours, CDS affiliates will need to swipe their ID card for access. The labs are also bookable by CDS affiliates for meetings, hackathons, workshops, and training events. Each space has a central table with chairs (seating about 6-8 people) and tables with equipment around the edges. We welcome ideas for additional equipment and software—please contact us with suggestions [email protected].

The following policies will help us all get the most from these spaces:

Specialized equipment that is in high demand has a queue, to ensure that everyone has access. Some of this equipment may also be bookable; see details below.
For equipment that is fragile or requires expertise to use safely, users need to go through appropriate training before using it.
Equipment may only be used by CDS affiliates and their direct collaborators.
Equipment may only be used for research and teaching-related purposes, not for commercial, social, or personal activities.
Bookable by CDS Affiliates

Digitization Lab Critical Making Lab Computer Cart

Digitization Lab

The Digitization Lab houses equipment, computers, and software to support a variety of different digitization activities such as transcription, text encoding, scanning, OCR, geo-referencing, and programming. We’ll provide quick-start guides and training materials, but if you need detailed guidance on digitization for a project, the staff in Digital Production Services can provide consultation and training. Equipment currently available includes:

4 iMac desktop computers with the following software: Oxygen XML editor, QGIS, Filemaker Pro, Adobe Creative suite, RStudio, Anaconda.
A large format scanner connected to a workstation and monitor (Epson Expression 13000 XML archival scanner) for scanning documents and photographs up to 12.2" x 17.2; this workstation also has ABBYY FineReader OCR software installed.
A small format scanner connected to a workstation and monitor (Epson Perfection 850 photo scanner) for scanning photographs, negatives, and slides.

Critical Making Lab

The Critical Making Lab houses equipment, computers, and software to support creative and exploratory work with data visualization, data physicalization, critical making, and augmented/virtual reality. Equipment currently available includes:

Apple Studio workstation and Apple Studio display, suitable for large-scale rendering, model training, and video editing, with the following software installed: [details]
A set of Meta Quest goggles and a Dell notebook computer
Book and paper construction supplies (paper cutter, scissors, adhesives, paper, thread)

We welcome your ideas for other tools and supplies for this small-scale maker space!

Computer Cart

We have a computer cart with 10 MacBook laptops that is available for teaching, workshop events, and other situations where access to a set of computers with a standard configuration is important. It is stored in the Digital Scholarship Group, and can be used in any space within the library. Please contact us ([email protected]) if you have specialized software needs or might need to use these computers regularly.