MSU’s rich history just went high-tech, with the creation of a new application designed to educate users about the university’s historical background.
The app, msu.seum, is available on iTunes for iPhones and iPod touches. The free app was released in July, according to iTunes.
“MSU is huge and people walk around all day and have absolutely no idea about the heritage and archaeology that is literally beneath their feet,” Ethan Watrall, an assistant professor of anthropology, said. “The app gives them a nice window into the past of our campus and how that relates to the present.”
Lynne Goldstein, MSU professor of anthropology and one of the driving forces behind the creation of the app, said the app is focused on the north side of campus, which is the oldest part.
The north side of campus features historical places such as the MSU Museum, Beaumont Tower, Chittenden Hall, the Union and West Circle Neighborhood.
The app has a location identifier that allows users to pinpoint their position and learn about the history of their surroundings, with pictures accompanied by descriptions.
“You can look at it if you’re sitting in your office or if you’re walking around campus,” Goldstein said. “It divides the history of campus into sections. We can dig deeper (and) you can see if any archaeology has been done.”
The concept behind the app began in the summer of 2011 as a collaboration between MSU’s Campus Archaeology Field School, run by Goldstein, and MSU’s Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool , directed by Watrall.
For Watrall’s fieldschool, the theme that year was mobile apps. Creating an app centered around campus history became the student’s summer-long project, and they began meeting up with the students in Goldstein’s program.
“My students were providing the archaeology, and his students were trying to figure out how to program it,” Goldstein said. “At the end of the five weeks, they had a prototype.”
Goldstein said while the prototype was a great beginning, it needed more work.
Watrall said with extra resources and funds provided by MATRIX: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at MSU, they were able to polish the app into its current form. Watrall said he hopes that with more funds and time, the app will be on other platforms.
Graduate student Katy Meyers was a teaching assistant for the Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool, and was involved with the project from the beginning. Meyers said the app could serve as a crash course on MSU’s history for incoming freshman.
“I think having a sense of the history of your university is really important,” Meyers said. “It has such a strong dedication to its story, to the preservation and maintenance of the history.”
The app is nearing 250 downloads off iTunes, Watrall said.
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