MSU debuts largest U.S. media collection in country

EAST LANSING - Feeling like Netflix has nothing left to offer?

Worn out the latest and greatest playlists on Spotify?

Fear not, Michigan State University Libraries now hosts the largest collection of U.S. media, including CDs, DVDs and video games in the country. The donation came courtesy of the analytics and media monetization firm Rovi Corporation, which previously stored the collection in Ann Arbor.

Unveiled Monday afternoon at the MSU Main Library, the collection is comprised of approximately 681,000 albums, 163,000 films and 17,000 video games spanning the past 35 years of popular culture. Everything from little-known Commodore 64 titles to Super Mario Bros. is now available at MSU, said Clifford Haka, director of MSU Libraries.

While the collection will have immense recreational interest, the opportunity for studying the past three decades of media is significant, he said.

“We have an obligation to ensure these materials are used and we fully intend to make sure that happens," he said.

The public demand for the donated materials has been staggering since the university took on the collection in July, Haka said. Music ranging from little-known jazz recordings to Nas' Street Dreams now are housed on campus at MSU, as well as nearly every commercially released DVD since the medium was popularized in the U.S. in the 1990s.

Filling more than 5,800 requests for materials so far has outpaced the library's ability to keep up and he expects hundreds of additional requests to continue pouring in each week. The university is making the films and albums available to the public statewide through the Michigan eLibrary’s MeLCat system. Residents are able to request DVDs and CDs now kept at MSU for delivery to roughly 400 member libraries, Haka said.

Noting the collection’s move from Rovi’s space in Ann Arbor to East Lansing represented “yet another win for MSU,” Kathy Weidman, senior vice president and general manager of metadata for Rovi, said the university distinguished itself from competitors in a major way.

“We chose MSU because we believe they truly understand the value of this collection and making it available to students and the public,” she said. Obtaining the 1,050 cabinets from Rovi means MSU Libraries now hosts the largest collection of media in the country.

Library staff are currently working to enter the titles of each album, film and game donated. Other data, which could include the cast and crew associated with a given movie, will hopefully be "scraped" from online sources to enable more sophisticated searching, Haka said. The hope is a person would be able to search for the producers behind films like Some Like it Hot and find any other projects they worked on, he said.

The video game collection will be kept on-site in part due to the need for specific consoles to play them, said Seth Martin, MSU Libraries’ director of development. Many of the games will eventually be playable inside the library once planned gaming rooms are established on the fourth floor, he said.

The university is currently searching for consoles in order so the public and students studying game design can play or research past titles.

Video games could be one of the most significant additions to the university’s collection, Haka said, due to the medium's relatively short existence.

“We’re checking eBay and asking people to get in touch with us if they have old game consoles, he said.

Cabinets, weighing upwards of 400 pounds, were stacked three high in long rows throughout the main library’s basement for the afternoon unveil. Much of the collection will be permanently housed on the main library's fourth floor. Thanks to additional supports added to the building a number of years ago, no renovations were needed in order to compensate for the collection's weight.

Contact RJ Wolcott at (517) 377-1026 or rwolcott@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @wolcottr.