Milner Library's 40-foot digital wall has become Edmonton's shared screen

A crowd of Edmontonians looked up in April as the Artemis II rocket launched, the first crewed flight to the moon in 50 years. In February, people in the same spot watched Canada compete at the Winter Olympics. None of them had to leave town. The action played out on the 40-foot-wide, 20-foot-tall digital wall at the Stanley A. Milner branch of the Edmonton Public Library. Anyone can walk in and watch.

Staff call it the Wall. "Whenever I'm meeting somebody that hasn't been to Milner before, I'll say, 'Meet you in front of the Wall. Trust me, you'll know what I mean,'" says Vicky Varga, EPL's director of collections and technology.

The idea came from former EPL CEO Pilar Martinez, who saw a similar display at Queensland University of Technology in Australia while on a speaking tour. The Wall is the only installation of its scale in North America.

The touchtable at the Mill Woods branch served as a testbed for some of its technology during the Milner renovation, and that is where EPL's partnership with MacEwan University's computer science program began. Students now design games for the Mill Woods touchtable and for the touch screens along the bottom of the Milner Wall. The games can be anything from word games to Space Invaders-style shooters, but they have to reach a level of polish. "It's a great way for students to get community feedback," Varga says.

The library livestreams live events on the Wall, including the World Cup, the Olympics and Oilers playoff hockey. Livestreaming Artemis II was a last-minute idea. "It wasn't a use case we initially saw for it," Varga says, "but people have really liked it. During the World Cup we had people from all sorts of backgrounds watching on all three levels at Milner, sharing this experience together."

The Wall is at the Stanley A. Milner Library, 7 Sir Winston Churchill Sq NW, Edmonton. Digital exhibits and games are scheduled in advance and posted at epl.ca.