A Blue Ribbon Task Force formed in 2007 to investigate Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access has released its final report. You can read the full report here.
Texas Digital Library Blog
Digital Preservation Task Force report now available online
March 12th, 2010
TDL and the Texas Water Digital Library
March 9th, 2010
Share information. Make it easy for others to find. Build knowledge and insight faster. That’s the idea behind the collaborative work of the Texas Digital Library.
Last month, the Texas Digital Library (TDL) embarked on a new collaborative project in partnership with several prominent water researchers in the state. With these partners, the TDL is developing a resource for sharing Texas water data called the Texas Water Digital Library (TWDL). The TWDL will federate water research currently stored in dispersed databases and websites at various Texas universities. It will electronically harvest these resources from cooperating institutions (using OAI-ORE technology) and deposit them in a TDL-hosted DSpace repository, creating a single place for researchers to search for water data from every part of the state.
The Texas Water Digital Library serves as a model for the kind of cooperative efforts that the Texas Digital Library facilitates. The mission of the TDL is to provide services to faculty members at member institutions that will facilitate collaboration with their peers as they conduct and disseminate their research. The TWDL uses two of the services – a digital repository and the OJS peer-reviewed journaling system – provided by TDL and represents the kind of collaboration that TDL intends to foster and support.
The creation of the TWDL involves cooperation among key researchers at several Texas universities, including Dr. David Maidment, the director of the Center for Research in Water Resources at UT Austin; Dr. B. L. Harris, Director of the Texas Water Resources Institute at Texas A&M; and Dr. Ken Rainwater, Director of the Texas Tech University Water Resources Center.
Participants in the project met on February 17 to begin discussions about how best to provide resources. Future meetings to advance the project are in the works, and the TWDL planners will provide an update on the project at the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries, to be held at UT Austin in May.
TDL offers courses on Vireo and Open Conference Systems
March 4th, 2010On Thursday, March 25, the Texas Digital Library will offer two full-day training courses: ETD Management with Vireo and Online Conference Management with OCS. Be sure to register early to reserve your space.
Both classes will be held at Baylor University, in the Dutton Avenue Office and Parking Facility. The registration fee for each class is $50.
Please visit the TDL training page for more information about the courses.
ETD Management with Vireo
In this course, students receive an overview of Vireo, the system created by the Texas Digital Library for handling the online submission and management of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Students will gain hands-on experience using Vireo to shepherd a thesis or dissertation through the entire ETD workflow.
Among the topics covered in the course are the following:
- Thesis submission using the student submittal interface
- Processing and approval of the document using the staff administrative interface
- Configuring the staff administrative interface
Recommended audiences for this course include support staff for Thesis Offices and Offices of Graduate Studies, as well as DSpace management staff.
Online Conference Management with OCS
In this course, participants will learn how to manage an academic conference online using open-source Open Conference Systems software. Students will learn via instruction from an expert user and hands-on activities.
The Texas Digital Library hosts OCS for its members, so no installation or software maintenance is required for those wishing to use OCS. Go here for more about the TDL’s Online Conference Management offering.
Among the topics covered in the course will be:
- setting up a conference Web site
- determining a conference timeline
- managing registrations
- handling conference submissions and the peer review process
- publishing conference proceedings
TDL travels to WebWise 2010
March 3rd, 2010
When WebWise 2010 convened in Denver March 3-5, Texas Digital Library co-director Mark McFarland was in attendance.
McFarland traveled to the conference, held at the Colorado Convention Center, to showcase Vireo, the TDL’s submission and management system for electronic theses and dissertations. He discussed the system at a project demonstration session on Thursday, March 4.
The WebWise Conference is an annual event that “brings together representatives of museums, libraries, archives, systems science, education, and other fields interested in the future of high quality online content for inquiry and learning.” It is sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which provided the TDL with grant funding for the development of Vireo. (IMLS Grant #: LG-05-07-0095-07)
The theme is of the 2010 WebWise Conference was “Imagining the Digital Future.”
In addition to McFarland, other TDL members and friends attended WebWise 2010, including John Hawthorne of the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College and Michele Reilly of the University of Houston.
For more information about Vireo, view a brief introductory presentation or read about it on the TDL website. You can also learn more about the IMLS grant that funded the development of Vireo and the TDL’s Federated Statewide ETD Repository.
New issue of Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is available
March 1st, 2010The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, an online scholarly journal hosted by the TDL Electronic Press, has released its latest issue. The special edition issue is entitled “Virtual Economies, Virtual Goods and Service Delivery in Virtual Worlds.”
A description from the editors:
In this special edition on virtual-world goods and trade, we are pleased to present articles from a global cohort of contributors covering a wide range of issues. Some of our writers, such Edward Castronova, Julian Dibbell or KZero’s Nic Mitham will be well known to you as distinguished leaders in the field, but it is equally our pleasure to introduce exciting new voices. Here you will find pieces written by academics, practitioners, journalists, a documentary filmmaker and perhaps the youngest contributor to JVWR yet, Eli Kosminksy, who attends high school in upstate New York. We would also point out that this issue extends its format to include Anthony Gilmore’s pictorial story, Julian Dibbell’s audio interview, and Lori Landay’s machinima. In real life, most contributors live in the US, the UK and Europe, and we, the editors, are based in Australia and France.
The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research uses Open Journal Systems (OJS) journal-management software and is hosted by the Texas Digital Library as part of the TDL Electronic Press. Find out more about OJS and TDL Electronic Journal-hosting by visiting the TDL website.
Scholarly Electronic Journals training course rescheduled for March 11
February 26th, 2010The Scholarly Electronic Journals training course originally planned for February 23 has been rescheduled for Thursday, March 11, 2010. The course had been postponed due to inclement weather in the Waco area.
The course will take place at Baylor University from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Cost for the course is $50.
Those interested in taking the March 11 course should contact the TDL at info@tdl.org.
Registration is open for TCDL 2010!
February 26th, 2010
The Texas Digital Library is pleased to announce that registration is now open for the 4th annual Texas Conference on Digital Libraries, to be held May 17-18, 2010, in Austin, Texas. The conference will take place at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center located on the UT Austin campus.
Once again, TDL member institution Baylor University is managing attendee registration for the event. To register for the conference, please visit https://www.baylor.edu/lib/index.php?id=61797. The registration fee is $50.
For more information about TCDL 2010, please visit the conference website, and also be sure to join us on the TCDL 2010 Crowdvine network and follow us on Twitter to receive important updates about the event. (Username: TCDL2010, Official hashtag: #TCDL10).
About TCDL 2010
The 2010 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries will take place May 17-18 at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center located on the UT Austin campus.
The theme of TCDL 2010 is Collaboration, and presentations will focus on issues of partnership and cooperation in the service of advancing scholarly communications. We are developing a program packed with expert speakers, and we are excited about providing a rich and informative experience for those who attend. To learn about ways to participate in this year’s conference, please see the Call for Participation located on the conference website.
In its fourth year, the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries will move to the AT&T Executive Education & Conference Center, a full-service conference, dining, and hotel facility that provides a more convenient location, greater flexibility, and the latest communications technology for presenters and participants.
To cover the costs of this move and to offer a more enjoyable overall conference experience, TCDL will charge a nominal registration fee of $50. This fee will cover all conference materials, an evening reception on the first day of the conference, and breakfast and snacks both days. Attendees will also have the opportunity to stay at the conference center hotel at the state rate.
JISC offers resource for digital repository management
February 25th, 2010
Note to repository managers: JISC has just released a great resource for planning and managing digital repositories called the Digital Repositories InfoKit. It’s meant to be a “practical ‘how-to’ guide to setting up and running digital repositories.”
The InfoKit includes everything from background information on repositories and issues like Open Access and scholarly communication to planning, technical, and management considerations. The site provides a lucid, comprehensive survey that should prove useful to everybody who works with repositories, but especially those just getting started with their institutional repositories.
Be sure to check it out. And while you’re there, take a look at all the other information resources JISC offers on information and learning technologies.
TDL announces keynote speakers for TCDL 2010
February 24th, 2010The Texas Digital Library (TDL) is excited to announce its keynote speakers for the upcoming Texas Conference on Digital Libraries: Dr. Leslie Carr, of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and Dr. Reagan Moore, from the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Leslie Carr, the TCDL 2010 opening keynote speaker, is a senior lecturer in the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group (IAM) in the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton. He is also the technical director of the EPrints Repository software team and the manager of the ECS repository. Dr. Carr writes about repositories and repository management on the blog RepositoryMan.
Dr. Reagan Moore, Professor in the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, will offer the closing address for TCDL 2010. Dr. Moore coordinates research efforts in development of policy-based data management systems that are used to support data grids, digital libraries, processing pipelines and persistent archives. He is the principal investigator for the development of the integrated Rule Oriented Data System (iRODS), a technology in use by the Texas Digital Library as it develops a geographically-distributed Preservation Network for its members’ digital assets.
About TCDL 2010
TCDL 2010 will take place May 17-18 at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center on the UT Austin campus. In its fourth year, TCDL provides a forum for TDL members and others to explore issues related to digital libraries and digital scholarship.
The TCDL 2010 conference theme is Collaboration, and the conference program will be packed with experts speaking on issues of partnership and cooperation in the service of advancing scholarly communication. Along with its two distinguished keynote speakers, TCDL 2010 will feature presentations, panels, and workshops highlighting cooperative work being done around the state on digital libraries and digital scholarship.
For more information about TCDL 2010, please visit the conference website or follow the conference on Twitter (Username: TCDL2010).
February issue of TDL Update newsletter now available
February 23rd, 2010Check out the latest issue of TDL Update, the newsletter of the Texas Digital Library, to discover the latest news and learn how TDL is working with its members to advance scholarly communications.
The February 2010 issue features the Royce-Darden Gospel Music Collection at the Baylor Electronic Library.
In addition, you’ll find:
- A story on the development of a shared statewide resource for water data and research: The Texas Water Digital Library
- Exciting news about the latest version of Vireo ETD Management software, which is now in the testing phase
- Information about the 2010 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries
- A reminder about Vireo user resources, including video tutorials, a wiki, and a new Listserv
- News about Texas Tech University Libraries’ use of digital scanners
- Information about spring training classes from the TDL
For suggestions about content for the TDL Update, please contact Kristi Park at kristi.park@austin.utexas.edu.