Northwestern students creating their own media projects soon will have a place to work on them where media classes cannot meet.

NU Media Works, a new digital media center located in the basement of University Library, will contain public computers with high-end software for audio, photo and video editing projects when it opens next Wednesday.

Administrators saw a need for the $100,000 Media Works facility because although there are several labs where students can work on digital projects, they often are booked for class usage, said Tom Board, director of technology support services.

“For students who wanted to casually do work, there wasn’t really a public space,” Board said. “This will be a space where students can go without being part of a class and work on their audio and video projects.”

Media Works is designated solely for drop-in student use. Free seminars will be available during the year to show students how to make the most of the new facility, said Bob Taylor, director of academic technologies.

The project is a result of a collaboration between the academic technologies department and the School of Music, the School of Communication, the Medill School of Journalism, and the School of Education and Social Policy. Officials from the schools began meeting with the department in January to discuss students’ changing computing needs, Taylor said.

Initially, Media Works will be geared toward video projects, which Taylor said is a result of increasing student interest in creating and editing videos.

The nine workstations will offer Avid Express DV and Apple Final Cut Pro, the latest software for video editing. The computers –three Apple and six PC models — also will support image-editing, illustration and Web development applications.

“There is about $3,000 to $4,000 worth of software on each machine,” Taylor said.

Each workstation has two monitors to give students plenty of visual space and comes equipped with connection ports so students can download materials from equipment such as cameras and camcorders, Taylor said.

Media Works is being installed and operated by academic technology, said David Bishop, university librarian. The library simply is giving space from two old library classrooms and an open lab to the project.

Installing the center in the library made sense because of facilities such as the Mitchell Media Center already in the library, Board said. Bringing Media Works to the same location will centralize these resources and improve their quality, Taylor said.

In addition, the location of the center allows room for expansion.

“This lab complex will be a perfect place to continue to add digital media space,” Taylor said.

But academic technologies will wait to see what kinds of projects students are using the new center for to make decisions about how and whether to expand the facilities, he said.