Michigan State University had a serious come up this week, and it was not on the football field.
While most of the coverage surrounding Michigan State centered on the football team’s stunning defeat of the University of Michigan over the weekend, a different type of gift was recently bestowed upon the school.
MSU could arguably be the most prestigious college in the country for music now, thanks to a massive donation from the Rovi Corporation.
Rovi donated its “Rovi Media Collection” to MSU, which means the university controls the largest media collection held by any library in the United States.
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| Clifford H. Haka, Director of Libraries, MSU |
“We are honored to be the proprietors of the largest media archive in the country, which has quickly become the most requested material in the Michigan inter-library loan system,” said Clifford H. Haka, Director of Libraries, Michigan State University.
“The ‘Rovi Media Collection’ dramatically enhances our teaching curriculum and research within the College of Music, popular culture and film studies, and an emerging gaming program,” Haka said.
Rovi Corporation has been archiving CDs, DVDs and games that have been released or imported commercially in the United States since 1999.
MSU will handle the ongoing maintenance and care of the physical collection which consists of almost 1 million CDs, DVDs, and games.
That’s all good, but the real value lies in the meta-data Rovi is passing to MSU and the possibilities it has for the curriculum and new technologies.
Rovi has collected almost 20 million data points that are used as guide and recommendation engines by companies like AllMusic.com and Facebook.
“Assembling a collection of such cultural and historic importance and overall magnitude would simply not have been feasible with our current budget,” Haka said. “On behalf of all of our users at MSU and across Michigan, we thank Rovi for this generous gift.”
