The James and Anne Duderstadt Center
In the early 2000s, the Duderstadt Center’s Groundworks Media Lab had double of something that still exists today: the conversion rack. The conversion rack is a resource that takes different types of analog and outdated media and converts it into a digital format. When Groundworks moved to its current location on the main floor, the…
In the early 2000s, the Duderstadt Center’s Groundworks Media Lab had double of something that still exists today: the conversion rack. The conversion rack is a resource that takes different types of analog and outdated media and converts it into a digital format. When Groundworks moved to its current location on the main floor, the two original conversion racks became three: adding one with a specialty of exclusively turning VHS tapes into DVDs. However, as the world became less reliant on physical media and more reliant on high definition, the number of conversion racks reduced down to the one rack that stands today.
Just this summer, for the first time in 20 years, the conversion rack was updated and is no longer running on Windows ‘98. In its place the team at the Digital Media Commons upgraded it to a modern touch interface now running on a Raspberry Pi operating system.
The conversion rack is just one of the ways Groundworks converts old media into a usable form in the digital world, along with film negative scanning, document scanning, and slide scanning.