By Adam Forgie
Humanities students have several new computer labs to assist them in the technical portion of their studies.
With more space and all new computers, humanities majors not only have upgraded to a new building, they have new computers and materials to advance their education.
?We have about double the space that we had so we won?t have to turn students away so quickly,? said Jerry Larson, director of the Humanities Technology and Research Support Center.
Earlier this year, the Humanities Department moved due south from the Jesse Knight Humanities Building to the brand new Joseph F. Smith Building.
?It was really dark and dusty in the old labs and it probably was a little stressful for students to study, so I think that having new labs make it more comfortable to learn,? said Janae Bushman, Humanities Learning Resource Center lab attendant.
While preferential treatment is given to those taking humanities classes, all students can use the various labs.
Travis Olsen, a junior from Houston majoring in English, said it is nice to have a personal ?cubicle? at each computer station.
?The best part about the new labs is that no one is ever in them,? Olsen said.
The environment of the JKHB labs left something to be desired.
?It is definitely a better learning environment than the JKHB, especially because we have windows and lots of them,? Bushman said.
Along with new spacious computers labs comes new technology.
?The computers in the HLRC will play streaming video where before we didn?t have as many of our digitized, where most of them are digitized now,? Larson said.
Logistics at the new labs also improved compared to the old JKHB labs.
Larson said, ?We have separate computer classrooms for PC and Macintosh so that we don?t have to tie up the lab to teach those classes.?
A testing lab is also available for those in the Humanities Department.
The HLRC has different programs and videos in many different languages, not available in other campus computer labs, for student use.
The students can listen to various videotapes and DVDs in many languages in the new HLRC, Bushman said. Most languages offered by BYU are available in the HLRC media library.