University of Maryland College of Information Studies

The National Public Broadcasting Archives (NPBA) – housed as part of the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland – preserves the history of American non-commercial broadcasting materials. It is housed at the University of Maryland, College Park in Hornbake Library. NPBA serves as a living reminder of the cultural and intellectual continuity of the effort to make television something more than commercial networks can provide. Its mission is to work with the primary national entities of American noncommercial broadcasting to identify records and programs of historical value and to serve as a repository for those materials. Its collection is open to the public. NPBA was initiated by educator and former PBS board member Donald R McNeil (1923–1996). Citing the language of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 that the primary entities of public broadcasting will "establish and maintain a library and archives of non-commercial educational television and radio programs and related materials," McNeil convinced the chief officers of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio and the Association of America's Public Television Stations to launch a cooperative effort to gather in one place the historical record of American public broadcasting. The University of Maryland Libraries agreed to serve as the academic host for the effort and the Archives was officially inaugurated June 1, 1990. NPBA maintains the archival record of key public broadcasting agencies such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), National Public Radio (NPR), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Children's Television Workshop (CTW) as well as important program materials from stations WAMU 88.5 FM, WETA and Maryland Public Television. The NPBA includes the NPR News Programming Collection. NPBA also maintains the personal papers of over 120 individuals who were associated with public radio or television during the course of their careers. NPBA continues to grow and develop with the regular transfer of participants' records to its storage areas. The Archives also seeks new collections from other organizations and individuals associated with public broadcasting. To enhance its holdings the Archives welcomes additional correspondence, memoranda, reports, meeting minutes and daily logs or journals; photographs, films, audio/videotapes, kinescopes, graphic materials, scrapbooks, journals and magazines.

The Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland is home to several collections – the National Public Broadcasting Archives and the Library of American Broadcasting among them – housed together on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park. Among the other holdings is the unusual Art Gliner Humor Collection, since humor plays such an important part in the history of radio and television programming. Douglas Gomery, professor emeritus at Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, is Resident Scholar at the Archives. He donated his papers and some 5,000 books to the Broadcasting Archives when he retired from teaching in 2005. Gomery served on the committee that put the Broadcasting Archives in place, and considers the Archives the proudest achievement of his 25-year career at Maryland. He describes the collection as one of the top five research collections for the study of radio and television in the United States.Other scholars who have donated their libraries and papers to the Broadcasting Archives include John M. Kittross and Christopher H. Sterling. The Archives also holds extensive books and papers from the National Association of Broadcasters and is actively growing its collection of materials concerning broadcast media in Washington, D.C. (The Pick Temple collection – from the popular 1950s children's show on WTOP – is currently being accessioned.) The Broadcasting Archives is located in Hornbake Library on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park, just off the northeast corner of Washington, D.C. The Broadcasting Archives is a unit of the Archives and Manuscripts Department of the Collection Management and Special Collections Division, University of Maryland Libraries.

The Library of American Broadcasting (LAB) – a Washington, D.C. institution since 1972 – was founded as the Broadcast Pioneers Library in space donated by the National Association of Broadcasters. The collection was thought up by William S. Hedges, a retired NBC executive, who created the Broadcasting Pioneers History Project in 1964 and began collecting historical materials. The Library expanded rapidly for twenty years, but as space and funding became increasingly scarce, the Library's governing board decided to seek another setting for the collection. They chose the University of Maryland, and in October 1994, LAB moved to its new location.Now housed in the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland, the Library of American Broadcasting is a wide-ranging collection of audio/video recordings, books, pamphlets, periodicals, personal collections, photographs, scripts, and vertical files devoted exclusively to the history of broadcasting. LAB holds many collections of note, including the papers of Sol Taishoff, founder of the influential industry publication Broadcasting; the papers of Helen J. Sioussat, director of the Talks Department at CBS (1937–58); the scrapbooks of Edward J. Kirby, chief of the radio branch of the War Department in World War II; and the papers of Edythe Meserand, radio executive and first President of the American Women in Radio and Television, among others.The Library of American Broadcasting received onscreen credit for research materials provided to the producers of the film Good Night and Good Luck (2005). The holdings of the LAB yielded photographs of Murrow, as well as a number of shots of the CBS studios and offices of that era. These were instrumental in creating the period detail of the film, which received a total of six Academy Award nominations, one of which was for Art Direction.

The Laboratory for Automation Psychology (LAP) (also Laboratory for Automation Psychology and Decision Processes or LAPDP) was founded in 1983 by Kent Norman and Nancy Anderson as an affiliate of the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). It was housed in the University of Maryland, College Park's Department of Psychology and was devoted to the study of the cognitive side of the human/computer interface with an emphasis on the processes of judgment and decision making. Research has covered a wide range of topics from menu selection to direct manipulation and from user satisfaction to computer rage. Around 2006, research focus changed to psychological aspects of video games including factors of attraction and immersion, violent acts in video games, and skill sets required by different genre of video games. Facilities included usability testing stations with dual monitor computers and video cameras as well as web servers hosting experimental materials and providing data collection. The full range of video game consoles were added including the Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, and Xbox. Research in the LAP has been supported by corporations such as AT&T, Sperry, and IBM and by U.S. federal agencies such as NASA, NSF, NRL, and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) at the University of Maryland, College Park, is home to ten academic departments and a dozen interdisciplinary research centers and institutes. CMNS is one of 13 schools and colleges within the University of Maryland, College Park.In January 2015, CMNS had 339 tenure/tenure-track faculty members, 39,380 alumni, 4,912 undergraduate students and 1,424 graduate students. In October 2010, the University of Maryland's College of Chemical and Life Sciences and College of Computer, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences merged to form the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.CMNS students receive national awards, including Rhodes, Truman, Goldwater, Fulbright and Hollings Scholarships; National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships; and NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowships. In addition, undergraduate and graduate students conduct research in faculty research laboratories on campus or in the wide range of federal laboratories, research institutes and private companies in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.

The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland. It is also the largest university in both the state and the Washington metropolitan area. Its 12 schools and colleges offer over 200 degree-granting programs, including 113 undergraduate majors, 107 master's programs, and 83 doctoral programs. UMD is a member of the Association of American Universities and competes in intercollegiate athletics as a member of the Big Ten Conference. The University of Maryland's proximity to Washington, D.C., has resulted in many research partnerships with the federal government; faculty receive research funding and institutional support from many agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Security Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and has been labeled a "Public Ivy".In 2016, the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore formalized their strategic partnership after their collaboration aimed to create more innovative medical, scientific, and educational programs, as well as greater research grants and joint faculty appointments than either campus has been able to accomplish on its own. According to the National Science Foundation, the university spent a combined $1.14 billion on research and development in 2021, ranking it 17th among American universities. As of 2021, the operating budget of the University of Maryland is approximately $2.2 billion.

The "M" Circle is a commemorative traffic circle on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park. Created in 1976 to celebrate the American Bicentennial, the circle is noted for the large floral "M" that sits in its center. The flowers that make up the "M" are replaced twice annually. Around 1,200 tulip bulbs are planted in the fall and after blooming, are then replaced with around 3,500 marigolds or vodka begonias in the spring. In 1986 and 1987, the graduating classes donated funds for lighting the M.As part of the construction of the Purple Line route through campus, "M" Circle was relocated. The new "M" Circle is no longer in the middle of a traffic circle and instead sits as a mound on the campus's Engineering Fields, across the street from its original site. Work on the new circle was completed in 2020.

The University of Maryland College of Behavioral and Social Sciences is one of the 13 schools and colleges at the University of Maryland, College Park. With 10 departments, it is one of the largest colleges at the university, with three in ten University of Maryland undergraduates receiving their degree from the college. 45 research centers also are located in the College. Its social science programs are collectively ranked 10th in the United States by the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, and 18th in the world by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The Robert H. Smith School of Business (Smith School) is the business school at the University of Maryland, College Park, a public research university in College Park, Maryland. The school was named after alumnus Robert H. Smith (Accounting '50). One of 12 colleges and schools at the university's main campus, the Smith School offers programs at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. It is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) to award bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in business.

McKeldin Mall is a nine-acre quad in the heart of the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park. Named after Theodore McKeldin, the former Governor of Maryland, McKeldin Mall is the largest academic mall in the United States. It has been named one of the most picturesque college campus quads in the nation.

The Norbert Wiener Center for Harmonic Analysis and Applications (NWC) is a division of the Mathematics Department in the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences devoted to research and education in pure and applied harmonic analysis. The center, named after acclaimed scientist Norbert Wiener was founded in 2004 and is based out of the Mathematics Building on the University of Maryland, College Park campus. It is supported by the University of Maryland, the National Science Foundation, and local industries with which it interacts. Currently, the Norbert Wiener Center is actively involved in research project involved with waveform design, dimension reduction, geospatial terrain and image processing, data fusion, phase retrieval frames, and analysis on graphs.

The Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics (MCFP) is a research institute at the University of Maryland, College Park focused on theoretical physics.