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Highlights from the 2013 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries

May 20th, 2013

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.

mcgovern 240x211 Highlights from the 2013 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries

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:

Debra Hanken Kurtz Appointed Director of the Texas Digital Library

May 1st, 2013

New TDL Director Debra Hanken Kurtz

Debra Hanken Kurtz, Assistant Director of ITS and Head of Digital Experience Services at Duke University Libraries, has been appointed as the new director of the Texas Digital Library (TDL), a consortium of academic libraries in Texas that provides shared services in support of research and learning.

Kurtz will take over the duties of current director Mark McFarland on June 1. McFarland, who announced in November 2012 he would step down from his role, co-founded the Texas Digital Library in 2007, and has served as director or co-director of the organization since that time. McFarland will continue his duties as Director of Information Technology for the College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin.

“Through the TDL, Mark has built a consortium of libraries and librarians who are committed to advancing library services and values, and we will never be able to adequately acknowledge all his significant contributions.” said Dana Rooks, Chair of the Texas Digital Library Governing Board and Dean of Libraries at the University of Houston. “Debra Hanken Kurtz brings with her the skills and experience necessary to continue the growth of the TDL in this new phase of its existence. We look forward with great anticipation to what the future holds for TDL under her leadership.”

At Duke University Libraries, Kurtz provided leadership and direction for the Libraries’ digital collections, overseeing multiple facets of the Duke University Library’s web presence and leading early planning efforts for the library’s institutional repository. During her tenure at the Duke, she was an active partner within the Triangle Research Libraries Network and has been a voice for Kuali OLE, an open-source integrated library system built by and for academic and research libraries.

Kurtz earned a B.A. in English from Arizona State University and her M.L.S. from the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Texas Digital Library (TDL), headquartered in Austin, Texas, provides infrastructure, tools and services to its member organizations, aiming to enhance open access to scholarly materials, preserve digital collections, and encourage collaboration among scholars and librarians throughout the state of Texas. Beginning in 2005 as a partnership among four of the state’s Association of Research Libraries (ARL) universities, the TDL has since grown to represent large and small institutions of higher learning from every region of the state. Its suite of services includes hosting of DSpace institutional repositories, peer-reviewed online journals, and software for managing submission, approval, and publication of electronic theses and dissertations. For more information about the Texas Digital Library, please visit www.tdl.org.

TCDL 2013 announces pre-conference DigiCamp on May 6

March 21st, 2013

The TCDL 2013 program committee is pleased to offer a new and exciting opportunity for discussion and community-building around digital library issues: DigiCamp.

This pre-conference event will be held Monday, May 6, the day before the start of main conference proceedings.

If you are registered for TCDL 2013, there is no additional fee for attending DigiCamp, but space is limited, so please register at the link below if you plan to attend.

About DigiCamp
DigiCamp, which will follow an “unconference” model, will provide an informal, no-pressure, participant-driven event that seeks to:

Build community among librarians, archivists, technologists, repository managers, students and scholars and
Provide a forum for spontaneous conversation, the launching of new ideas, and the sowing of seeds for future collaborations.

How it works
As an “unconference,” the agenda for DigiCamp is not set beforehand, there are no prepared papers presented, the discussion topics and/or activities are decided upon by the participants the day of the gathering, and all attendees are encouraged to participate.

The overarching theme of DigiCamp is digital libraries. A call for discussion topics, tools and project demos will be made a few weeks before Camp, and might touch on areas such as metadata; digital curation; digital archives and special collections, big data; technology-based instruction; digital humanities; intellectual property; or cross-disciplinary skill sets. A DigiCamp wiki will be used to gather participants’ ideas. Those with the most participant-generated interest will prevail, although time will be built in for the unexpected.

DigiCamp is co-organized by Elizabeth Gushee, Digital Collections Librarian at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and Amy Rushing, Head of Digital Access Services at UT Libraries.

Member Story: TDL supports NSF-funded effort on sustainability research

March 21st, 2013

Researchers and librarians at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi are leading an ambitious effort – with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and technology support from the Texas Digital Library — to form an interdisciplinary network of researchers focused on sustainability and the environment in the South Texas Region.

The network is called RCN CE³SAR, or Research Coordination Network-Climate Energy, Environment and Engagement in Semiarid Regions. It is funded by the National Science Foundations Research Coordination Network Program, which seeks to “create new directions in research or education by supporting groups of investigators to communicate and coordinate their research, training and educational activities across disciplinary, organizational, geographic and international boundaries.”

According to Hong Xu, Project Librarian for RCN CE³SAR at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s Mary & Jeff Bell Library, the group is working to establish and engage a growing number of researchers from multiple institutions within the South Texas Region with support from major research institutions outside of the area.

The network is led by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, with Dr. Luis Cifuentes (Vice President of Research, Commercialization and Outreach) serving as Principal Investigator, in partnership with numerous South Texas higher education institutions, including Texas A&M International, University of Texas-Brownsville, and Texas State University — each of them a TDL member. Partners from outside the South Texas region include TDL founding member Texas A&M University.

The project was awarded funding from the NSF in late 2011 and is currently in the second year of an initial five-year plan to establish the network. Among its activities for community building and collaboration, the group is holding periodic charrettes on varying topics, including sustainable growth in the Eagle Ford Shale, as well as providing a shared project management software, and an informational website and project wiki that disseminate funding opportunities, details on the activities of the network, and news relevant to sustainability in the region.

The RCN CE³SAR team is using a number of scholarly communication services provided by the Texas Digital Library to facilitate its activities, and the support available through Texas A&M Corpus Christi’s membership in the TDL played a part in the project’s grant proposal to the NSF. Among the services that the TDL has deployed in support of RCN CE³SAR are:

A dedicated DSpace repository housing research of participants, conference materials, and future research products of the network
A project wiki
A WordPress website
A conference management site for managing the group’s charrettes and other meetings

Project Librarian Hong Xu is providing library and information services support the group. She says the group’s greatest challenge in these early days is finding ways to engage its more than 150 participants to take advantages of the opportunities the network provides. The team is using multiple methods and communication channels – including its wiki, website, conferences, and the like – to reach as many of its constituents as possible.

For more information about the RCN CE3SAR project, please visit its TDL-hosted website or contact Hong Xu at Hong.Xu@tamucc.edu.

Member Story: UT Southwestern deploys Vireo for Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

February 28th, 2013

Students in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at UT Southwestern now submit electronic theses or dissertations (ETDs) online using Vireo, resulting in a more streamlined process for submitting and managing ETDs.

The Graduate School is one of three degree-granting schools at UT Southwestern; each school processes ETDs independently from one another. As the largest ETD contributor, the Graduate School was selected as the first of the three schools to test and implement Vireo. The Medical School and the School of Health Professions will work with the Library to implement Vireo after the system receives an upgrade later this year.

Switching to Vireo involved process evaluation, staff training at the Graduate School office and in the Library, and limited student testing. Formerly, students were required to fill out paper forms and bring a copy of their ETD on a DVD or CD to the Graduate School office for processing. Students who participated in testing used the same ETDs that they had recently submitted through the traditional process, and then completed a survey to provide further feedback.

According to the administrator responsible for receiving and checking the students’ final submissions, the switch required adjustments but resulted in a better process:

“Making the change to online submission required changing work processes that had been in place for some time. It took a period of several months,” the administrator said. “Now that everything is in place, it has simplified and streamlined the process of final submission. It has saved me a great deal of time. It has saved time for the students as well.”

One example of the time-saving aspects of Vireo for students relates to the way they make revisions to their ETD documents. “If a change or correction is needed in the formatting of their document, all a student has to do is to make a revised PDF and upload it into Vireo,” the Vireo administrator said. “Formerly, students had to create a new revision, save it to another DVD or CD, and bring it to the Graduate School office. Use of Vireo is a great improvement for us and our students have all been quite enthusiastic about their experience.”

For library staff involved with ETD submissions, the changes have been particularly helpful for improved and efficient catalog entries. All of the needed information is in one location. Illegible handwritten entries are a thing of the past, and the ability to reuse the metadata further reduces error.

Everything students need for submitting their ETDs is available at the Library’s Electronic Theses & Dissertations portal, including:

Dissertation preparation instructions
Thesis/dissertation template
Student guide to online ETD submission
Online submission system login

TDL announces Spring 2013 Training Schedule

January 25th, 2013

Sign up now for TDL Training classes to be held this spring in College Station and San Marcos. All classes are FREE for members, but registration is required.

February 25, 2013 – Online Journals with Open Journal Systems – Texas A&M University – College Station
February 26, 2013 – Online Conference Management with OCS – Texas A&M University – College Station
April 23, 2013 – Vireo ETD Management – Texas State University
April 24, 2013 – Introduction to DSpace – Texas State University

For more information about the TDL Training Program and to register please visit the Training page on this website.

Vireo 1.8 Deployment Update

January 25th, 2013

The Texas Digital Library has concluded deployment and testing of staging instances of Vireo 1.8 for each member institution and will begin the rollout of production instances in February, beginning with UT Austin the week of February 4^th. Read the rest of this entry »

TDL to upgrade Conference Sites to OCS 2.3.5

January 25th, 2013

TDL technical staff have begun a project to upgrade all hosted online conference websites to the latest version of Open Conference Systems software (version 2.3.5). During the upgrade process, TDL is making an additional configuration change to some older conference sites that will bring them in line with current site setup and maintenance processes. Read the rest of this entry »

TDL releases results of 2012 Member Survey

January 22nd, 2013

In an effort to better understand members’ needs and their perception of the TDL’s work, the Texas Digital Library conducted its first survey of the TDL membership in the summer and fall of 2012. The survey questionnaire, developed by a member-driven committee, looked for feedback in three areas:

the TDL suite of services
outreach and promotion related to the TDL
the TDL’s organizational structure

Among the key findings from the survey:

DSpace and Vireo are the most valued services provided by the TDL.
Among the most requested improvements to TDL services were enhancements to the DSpace/repository offering, enhancements to the online journal service, and more customization options across all services.
Perception of the value of the TDL Helpdesk has improved over the past year, though more improvements are needed.
Faculty resistance to Open Access/new publishing models remains a key challenge to recruiting faculty involvement with TDL services. However, improving “user friendliness” of TDL services might be one way to overcome this resistance.
Among the TDL’s various user groups and working groups, the Vireo Users Group is considered very valuable.

The insights gained from the 2012 Member Survey will guide the TDL Governing Board and staff as they move forward with new initiatives. Additionally, in spring 2013, the TDL will conduct a companion survey of non-member library directors to gain further insight into the needs of Texas academic libraries.

For more detailed survey results and analysis, please read the full report.

Registration open for TCDL 2013

January 16th, 2013

Registration is now open for the 2013 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries! TCDL 2013 will be held May 7-8, 2013, in Austin, Texas at the Radisson Hotel & Suites in downtown Austin.

Discounted rates are available to early registrants through April 1, 2013. Faculty and staff at Texas Digital Library member institutions and students are eligible for additional discounts.

For detailed information about registration fees and to register for the conference, please visit the conference website.

About TCDL 2013

The Texas Conference on Digital Libraries covers topics relevant to the creation, promotion, and preservation of research, scholarship, and cultural heritage digital materials. The goal of TCDL 2013 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.

TCDL 2013 will welcome two exciting keynote speakers to anchor the conference program: Michele Kimpton, CEO of DuraSpace, and Nancy McGovern, Head of Curation and Preservation Services at MIT. Both speakers have distinguished careers tackling issues related to access to and preservation of digital content.

For more information about the event and program, please visit the TCDL 2013 conference website.

Deadline for Proposals is February 8

The TCDL 2013 program committee continues to accept proposals for presentations, panels, posters, and workshops through Friday, February 8.

See the full Call for Participation for more information about requirements and submission procedures.

Conference Hotel Rooms available

TCDL 2013 has a limited number of hotel rooms available for attendees at our conference venue, the Radisson Hotel & Suites-Downtown Austin. The rooms will be available at a reduced rate of $108/night if reserved by April 5, 2013. More details are available on the conference website, or you may RESERVE A ROOM ONLINE.

Questions about the conference can be directed to info@tdl.org or 512-495-4417.