TDL held a series of meetings in late October to give members the opportunity to convene user groups and working groups and attend training sessions.

The fall meetings consisted of two days of working group and user group meetings followed by two days of DSpace and Vireo training. All events were held in the Perry-Castaneda Library on the campus of UT Austin.

Dana Rooks, Dean of Libraries at the University of Houston, met with each group in her role as Vice-Chair of the TDL.

Dana Rooks, Dean of Libraries at the University of Houston, was in attendance at the meetings in her role as Vice-Chair of the TDL Governing Board. Her purpose in attending was to learn more about the activities of the groups and garner feedback from members about how they can be most effective in their contributions to the TDL and fellow members.

Working Group Meetings

The TDL Preservation Working Group and Metadata Working Group held meetings in the morning and afternoon of October 25, respectively, to continue working towards goals set for the coming year.

Preservation Working Group

The Preservation Working Group continued its work to develop a policy framework for a TDL preservation infrastructure, based on the Center for Research Libraries’ “10 Principles” for a preservation repository. (See the September 2011 newsletter for more on this project.)

Metadata Working Group

The Metadata Working Group continued work on a data dictionary for images and datasets and discussed further metadata training opportunities and plans for the TDL metadata website at http://blogs.tdl.org/metadata.

User Group Meetings

Two TDL User Groups – the Vireo User Group and the Services User Group – met on Wednesday, October 26. The purpose of these groups is to provide mutual support in the use of TDL services, as well as to interact with the TDL staff to make these services more effective for users.

Vireo Users Group

TDL developer Joseph Devries talks with the Vireo Users Group about plans for future software development.

The Vireo Users Group met in the morning of October 26 to discuss past and future software development on Vireo, with an emphasis on how the VUG has worked with the TDL development team to prioritize bug fixes and feature enhancements. TDL software developer Joseph Devries discussed the most recent upgrade to Vireo 1.2, which includes two key bug fixes, as well as plans for future development.

Services User Group

A new TDL user group met for the first time on Wednesday afternoon: the TDL Services User Group, led by Mira Green (UTMB) and Sarah Sutton (Texas A&M-Corpus Christi). The mission of the group is to serve as a community for librarians and library staff responsible for implementing TDL scholarly communication services, including Open Journal Systems, Open Conference Systems, WordPress, MediaWiki, and DSpace.

During Wednesday’s meeting, the group refined its mission and organizational structure in preparation for future work.

For more information about TDL Groups, visit the TDL website.