The annual Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (May 7-8) drew 151 attendees from around the state of Texas – and some from beyond Texas’ borders – for two and a half days of workshops, presentations, and opportunities for discussion around digital library topics. All events were held at the Radisson Hotel in Downtown Austin.
TCDL covers topics relevant to the creation, promotion, and preservation of research, scholarship, and cultural heritage digital materials. The goal of the conference each year is to bring together those working on library-related digital projects — including outreach librarians, repository managers, cataloguers, technical staff, and others — in order to build a practical, usable and sustainable model for digital libraries.
The event’s 151 attendees – primarily from Texas but from five other states as well – represented the growing conference’s largest attendance to date.
Nancy McGovern, Head of Curation and Preservation Services at MIT Libraries) delivers the opening keynote address at TCDL 2013.
The 2013 program featured keynote speakers Nancy McGovern (Head of Curation and Preservation Services at MIT Libraries) and Michele Kimpton (CEO of DuraSpace). Both speakers focused on the challenges of preserving digital content, as well as on the projects and organizations tackling those challenges today.
Along with the keynote talks, the main conference program served up a jam-packed schedule of presentations and panels on topics such as:
- Digital Humanities projects and existing infrastructure
- Creating a culture of Open Access
- Fanzine Digitization Projects
- Digital Library projects outside of Texas
- Metadata visualization projects
The first evening of the conference also featured a poster session, starting with a Minute Madness during which presenters gave rapid-fire, 60-second descriptions of their poster projects, followed by a reception during which attendees could view and discuss the posters with their presenters. And, for the first time ever, the main program at TCDL was preceded by a DigiCamp “unconference,” which provided an informal opportunity for dialogue and community-building among librarians, archivists, technologist, repository managers, students, and scholars.
The Texas Conference on Digital Libraries program was produced by the Texas Digital Library Conference Committee, which was chaired by Amy Rushing (UT Austin Libraries) and included members Jim Brewer (Texas Tech University), Jeanne Hazzard (Texas State University), Billie Peterson-Lugo (Baylor University), and Lesley Reynolds (Texas A&M University), working in collaboration with TDL staff Kristi Park and Ryan Steans.
For more information about the conference, please visit the following resources: