SANTA CLARA, Calif. and EAST LANSING, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rovi Corporation (NASDAQ: ROVI) and Michigan State University (MSU) today announced that Rovi has donated a rare and valuable media collection to MSU. This donation establishes the largest media collection held by a library in the United States. The new “Rovi Media Collection” is comprised of close to one million CDs, Blu-Rays, DVDs, and video games, and is now publicly available through the MSU library and interlibrary loan services.
“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. Assembling a collection of such cultural and historic importance and overall magnitude would simply not have been feasible with our current budget. On behalf of all of our users at MSU and across Michigan, we thank Rovi for this generous gift.”
“Rovi’s extensive collection of entertainment media has enabled the cataloging, metadata tagging, and editorial description of numerous albums, artists, movies, TV shows, and video games for our customers worldwide,” said Kathy Weidman, senior vice president and general manager, metadata, Rovi. “Our donation to Michigan State University marks the passing of these materials for use in an educational capacity, while also providing accessibility to the general public. It is extremely gratifying to establish the largest collection of entertainment content in a U.S. library and allow future generations to access and enjoy these wonderful media artifacts from the past two decades.”
As a result of Rovi’s meticulous efforts to catalog and ingest metadata about entertainment media products for its customers, the company’s archive has grown exponentially over the past 20 plus years. As one of the nation’s top 50 libraries with more than five million volumes held, MSU will manage the on-going care, storage, and maintenance of the physical collection.
The archive consists of CDs that have been commercially available in the U.S. as well as a significant percentage of releases imported from Europe. The DVD collection, which was started the year DVDs were introduced to the market, similarly represents the vast majority of commercially released DVDs in the U.S. The games archive focuses primarily on console games and PC games, beginning in 1999, and includes a number of titles that date back to the early 80s. The "Rovi Media Collection" also includes a catalog of metadata elements consisting of nearly 20 million data points. Today, Rovi continues to expand its metadata business and is a leading resource for international metadata with availability in more than 70 countries.
Michigan State University will host a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the official opening of the "Rovi Media Collection" on Monday, Oct. 19, 2015 at 2 p.m. in the West Wing of the MSU Main Library. Media are welcome to attend the free event. A reception will follow the ceremony and will be held in the Green Room, West Wing, Fourth Floor.
About Rovi Corporation
Rovi is leading the way to a more personalized entertainment experience. The company’s pioneering guides, data and recommendations continue to drive program search and navigation on millions of devices across the globe. With a new generation of cloud-based discovery capabilities and emerging solutions for interactive advertising and audience analytics, Rovi is enabling premier brands worldwide to increase their reach, drive consumer satisfaction and create a better entertainment experience across multiple screens. Rovi holds over 5,000 issued or pending patents worldwide and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Discover more about Rovi at Rovicorp.com.