ISU students have access to a massive amount of resources offered by the university.

Of the locations offered by the university, a few stand out particularly well to those who wish to broaden their technology while on campus.

One sort-of-well-known-but-not-fully-taken-advantage-of feature available to anyone with an ISU card is the rental desk at the Media Center, located in the basement of the library.

After walking down the steps to get to the library’s classrooms, turning left will put you at one of the best music/video rental opportunities ever — and all for free.

“Rental” isn’t exactly the correct word to use; it’s more of a check-out since the cost is simply showing your card. Once you’ve done that, a massive catalog of 5,000 DVDs and 8,000 music CDs are instantly available to check out.

With generous checkout periods like four weeks for CDs and one week for DVDs, even a student with a busy schedule will find time to watch or listen to what he or she chose to get.

Stephen Prell, 22, is a student worker for the library and helps people with the checkout process. “It’s an enormously useful system that we’ve got here,” Prell said. “Our collections are always up-to-date with the most recent CD and DVD releases. We even have a large number of VHS tapes available as well.”

“Up-to-date” mixed with “free” certainly has something to do with the popularity of the service among those who know about it.

Software for classes, textbook and personal use can also be checked out. Students can even go online to the library’s section of the ISU website and reserve a copy (for 10 days) of whatever they’d like to come in and pick up.

Charges do apply if an item is overdue, but with the time allotted to return an item, they shouldn’t be an issue for a student with even minimal organizational motivation.

Another great service is the Funded Media Equipment checkout system offered at the Communications Building in the northwest part of campus.

After finding the building — it’s got a hard-to-miss satellite on its roof — heading straight in and approaching the counter will give a registered student with just an ISU card access to an overwhelming selection of electronic equipment.

With literally hundreds of choices of equipment, from cameras and projectors to laptops and 4-foot speakers, it is well worth any student’s time to check out what the Communications Building has to offer.

According to Michelle Wilson, classroom services supervisor, the best part of it all is that “while you can’t check out more than one of a certain type of item, you can in fact check out one of everything offered.”

This means that if you and your apartment buddies wanted to host a Super Bowl party, all you’d need to make it epic would be a projector, a 9-foot screen and two massive speakers, all courtesy of the Communications Building.

Another reason to consider this service: They’ll show you how to use your item when you check out, you can reserve a month in advance, and you don’t even need to keep the items on campus.

Even with the massive inventory of electronics, more and more are being looked into consistently.

“We take suggestions on what to supply; we’re always noticing what we don’t have and making note of it,” Wilson said.

Both students and staff take advantage of what the facility has to offer, with great classroom tools always ready to be checked out.

Lost items will require reimbursement to the school, so make sure to be careful. Small cosmetic accidents are taken lightly,

A list of offered items is available on the ISU website, along with contact information for the Communications Building as well as usage rules and regulations info.