MSU Libraries

The MSU Libraries cataloguing department has extensive experience in the creation of bibliographic records. The Library has been creating and contributing MARC records to OCLC since 1975. Approximately 25,000 Voice Library titles in analog format have been cataloged by the MSU Libraries and are accessible in the online catalog. In the last several years the Library has been actively cataloging electronic resources, including a partnership role in a CIC cooperative cataloging project to provide bi bliographic access to ARTFL, a digital archive of classics in French language and literature. The Library holds an elected seat on the Policy Committee (Executive Board) of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), an international cooperative catalo ging effort housed at the Library of Congress, and is a participant in the PCC's NACO project for name authorities. The MSU Library holds over four million volumes, which makes it the 25th largest collection in the Association of Research Libraries - larger than the libraries of some Ivy League universities. It serves not only the 42,000 students at MSU, but als o every citizen of Michigan through its community borrower program, and has active outreach programs to school districts. The library also has an active text-digitization program, which works closely with the curriculum needs of undergraduate writing clas ses. Through its Digital Sources Center the library supports a wide range of projects including SGML, GIS, text and recorded speech digitization. The Library also serves as a source of copyright information for the university community.

Matrix

Based at Michigan State University, MATRIX is devoted to the application of new technologies in humanities and social science teaching and research. The Center creates and maintains online resources, provides training in computing and new teaching technologies, and creates forums for the exchange of ideas and expertise in new teaching technologies. As H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine's host, MATRIX houses and supports over 100 free electronic, interactive newsletters ("listservs"), edited by scholars in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. MATRIX / H-Net currently are involved in a series of ongoing projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and United States Information Service and the United States Information Agency.

Vincent Voice Library

The G. Robert Vincent Voice Library is the largest academic voice library in the nation. It is located on the fourth floor of the west wing of the MSU Library. It houses taped utterances (speeches, performances, lectures, interviews, broadcasts, etc.) by over 50,000 persons from all walks of life recorded over 100 years. Since 1974, the Vincent Voice Library has been headed by Dr. Maurice Crane.

Digital Sources Center

Michigan State University's DSC provides services in the following areas: copyright advice, scanning, geographic information systems.

Speech Processing Lab

The Speech Processing Laboratory at MSU (SPL) is a cognate lab in the Signal Processing Laboratories Consortium in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at MSU a nd the primary site for the fundamental speech-processing research undertaken in this project at MSU. Much of the major equipment necessary for this work is already in place in this laboratory and in the general computing environment in the College of Eng ineering. Some of the "local" facilities in the SPL include an array of networked (Windows NT) Pentium-II-based personal computers, a SUN Sparc 10/30 workstation (Unix), and extensive software support for algorithm development and signal acquisition and p reprocessing. In addition to facilities for signal processing, support facilities for graphics, word-processing, and the like are also in place

Teacher Education

The Department of Teacher Education offers students the opportunity to study teaching, learning, curriculum, and educational policy at all levels of school. With both a national and international reputation as a leader in teacher education, the Department is committed to the improvement to schools through the preparation of teachers, the study of teaching and learning, and the study of teacher education. The vision which informs and drives Teacher Education's mission parallels Michigan State University's basic land-grant philosophy; it is rooted in a strong commitment to contribute positively to the challenges confronting education today.

College of Arts & Letters

The College provides the foundation of education for all MSU students and an opportunity for in-depth study of many areas within the arts and humanities. Check out specific program offerings in the links below. All of our departments, schools, and programs strive to provide academic experiences of high quality that meet the needs of today's world. Thus, we encourage interdisciplinary study with global dimensions wherever appropriate.

Educator's Forum

Integrating the NGSW resources into a range of K-12 school districts, as well as college and university classrooms across the United States is an important part of this project. Faculty and staff in MSU's College of Education will oversee the K-12 initiatives, while Matrix will coordinate the university outreach. The partnership school districts span a range of communities, from urban and suburban districts that face a serious lack of social and economic resources, to poor rural districts, to one district with a wealth of resources. These districts were chosen both because of perceived needs by the districts themselves, and because of the enthusiasm of individual teachers and superintendents. Each of these districts also has strong and long-standing ties to the collection sites and other partnership institutions. Through H-Net's networks and college outreach programs, international faculty will also use the NGSW's collections in their lectures and discussion sections across a broad range of disciplines. NGSW resources will be integrated into classrooms at MSU, Northwestern, and Duke University as well.

Center for Speech and Language Research

The goal of CSLR is to create the next generation of conversational systems. The advent of conversational systems will revolutionize human computer interaction by enabling people to access information and conduct transactions as if they were conversing with a helpful human assistant.

CSLR is engaged in several projects that serve as testing grounds for developing key technologies for the next generation of conversational systems. In projects supported by the National Science Foundation, DARPA and the Office of Naval Research, CSLR is developing new approaches to spoken language understanding that combine acoustic, linguistic and domain knowledge using decision trees. The results of this research will be evaluated in conversational systems that are kept on-line 24 hours per day for telephone access to useful information in the Boulder, Colorado area (e.g., the CU Communicator for airline, hotel, and rental car information). The conversational systems that result from these research advances will be incorporated into the CSLU toolkit, and distributed free of charge to the research community, along with tools for users to develop and deploy their own systems.

H-Net

H-Net is an interdisciplinary organization of scholars dedicated to developing the enormous educational potential of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The computing heart of H-Net resides at MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences OnLine, Michigan State University, but H-Net officers, editors and subscribers come from all over the globe.

Among H-Net's most important activities is its sponsorship of over 100 free electronic, interactive newsletters ("lists") edited by scholars in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. Subscribers and editors communicate through electronic mail messages sent to the group. These messages can be saved, discarded, downloaded to a local computer, copied, printed out, or relayed to someone else. Otherwise, the lists are all public, and can be quoted and cited with proper attribution. The lists are connected to their own sites on the World Wide Web, that store discussion threads, important documents, and links to related sites on the web.

Chicago Historical Society

The nation's premier historical society, the CHS is a privately endowed, independent institution devoted to collecting, interpreting, and public presentation of the rich multicultural history of Chicago and Ill inois, as well as selected areas of American history, through exhibitions, programs, research collections, and publications. The CHS is committed to using its resources for research and education. In addition to a number of educational initiatives and tra ining sessions, CHS has secured title to the Studs Terkel tapes and the intellectual property they encode. CHS also holds a collection of audio and videotaped histories conducted by high school students in Chicago Neighborhoods.

Oyez, Oyez, Oyez

Northwestern University houses the "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" multimedia relational database devoted to United States Supreme Court and constitutional law, created and run by Jerry Goldman. Supported by grants from NEH a nd NSF (9602170), the Oyez project has become an authoritative resource for scholars, students, and professionals across a range of disciplines. The Oyez audio archive holds more than 500 hours of oral arguments; this number will double in the next two ye ars. When complete, the audio archives will provide an accessible portal to the great constitutional controversies of the last half of the twentieth century.

US History Out Loud

HPOL is a searchable multimedia database documenting and delivering authoritative audio relevant to American history and politics. This project is supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching With Technology Program in collaboration with Michigan State University and the National Gallery of the Spoken Word. Other website support from Northwestern University Library, School of Speech, Office of the Provost, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Political Science.

HPOL is a collection of invaluable audio materials  some available for the first time on this website  capturing significant political and historical events and personalities of the twentieth century. The materials range from formal addresses delivered in public settings to private telephone conversations conducted from the innermost recesses of the White House.  Our aim is to provide an accessible source of audio information to enliven instruction and scholarship in history and politics and to enable easy access for all persons to the rich audio archives of American history and politics.

InvoTek, Inc.

InvoTek is located in Alma, Arkansas and specializes in technology-based solutions that meet the needs of people with disabilities.  We are particularly interested in working with people who are severely physically disabled and unable to speak.

For several years after startup in 1988, InvoTek, Inc. developed and marketed accessible toys, augmentative communication devices, and a voice-dialing telephone (see Prior Products for examples).  By 1995, we saw that sophisticated advances in optoelectronic sensors provided new opportunities for people with disabilities in the areas of accessing environmental controls, augmentative communication devices and computers.  We successfully sought funding through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, and have received recognition for our accomplishments.  InvoTek, Inc. continues its emphasis on applied R&D to refine its innovations for commercial availability.

InvoTek is presently seeking strategic partners for its Laser Access System technology.  This technology has application in several product areas in addition to the disability field.

Linguistic Data Consortium

The Linguistic Data Consortium is an international non-profit supporting language-related education, research and technology development by creating and sharing linguistic resources including data, tools and standards

LDC is supported in part by grant IRI-9528587 from the Information and Intelligent Systems division of the National Science Foundation. LDC's corpus creation efforts are powered in part by Academic Equipment Grant 7826-990237-US from Sun Microsystems.

MI Library Consortium

The Michigan Library Consortium is a nonprofit, membership organization. MLC serves Michigan libraries of all types and sizes by providing quality products and services in a cost-effective manner in order to maximize the sharing of information among its members.

Oral History Association

The Oral History Association, established in 1966, seeks to bring together all persons interested in oral history as a way of collecting human memories. With an international membership, the OHA serves a broad and diverse audience. Local historians, librarians and archivists, students, journalists, teachers, and academic scholars from many fields have found that the OHA provides both professional guidance and collegial environment for sharing information.

In addition to fostering communication among its members, the OHA encourages standards of excellence in the collection, preservation, dissemination and uses of oral testimony. To guide and advise those concerned with oral documentation, the OHA has established a set of goals, guidelines, and evaluation standards for oral history interviews.

The association also recognizes outstanding achievement in oral history through an awards program. Awards are given in the categories of publications, nonprint media productions, teaching , and oral history projects.

American History Association

The American Historical Association (AHA) is a nonprofit membership organization founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts, and the dissemination of historical research. As the largest historical society in the United States, the AHA serves as the umbrella organization for historians working in every period and geographical area. Among its 15,000 members are faculty at secondary schools and two- and four-year colleges and universities, independent historians, and historians in museums, historical organizations, libraries and archives, government, and other areas.