2026 TDL Awards nominations are now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted nominations to celebrate the people and projects advancing digital libraries, archives, and scholarship across Texas. We look forward to honoring the winners at the 2026 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (TCDL) this June in Austin. For any questions or further information, please contact us at info@tdl.org.
About the TDL Awards
Each year, the TDL Awards honor Texas-based individuals and groups that have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of digital libraries. Digital libraries are defined broadly as access to digital collections from allied organizations such as museums, archives, historical societies, and other cultural heritage institutions.
Nominees may serve in any position within their organization. Anyone who contributes to digital scholarship or the preservation, management, or access of digital content is eligible for these awards. An affiliation with a TDL member institution is not a requirement for either award nominees or nominators. Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged. Learn more about past award winners.
The nomination extended deadline is Monday, February 16, 2026. One winner from each award category will receive free registration to the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries.
The TCDL Awards Subcommittee encourages submissions from professionals in historically underrepresented communities and their allies, including but not limited to the presence and contributions of all persons regardless of age, culture, abilities, bodies, ethnic origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, nationality, race, religion, or socioeconomic status. If you have a question or suggestion, please contact TDL at info@tdl.org.
TDL Awards Categories
Nominees may serve in any position within their organization. Anyone who contributes to digital scholarship or the preservation, management, or access of digital content is eligible for these awards. An affiliation with a TDL member institution is not a requirement for either award nominees or nominators. Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged. There is no limit to how many nominations you submit. You may also submit nominations for multiple award categories. Please note that only nominees, or at least one nominee for group applications, must be based in Texas or affiliated with a Texas institution to be eligible for TDL awards.
The TCDL Awards Subcommittee encourages submissions from professionals in historically underrepresented communities and their allies. Including but not limited to the presence and contributions of all persons regardless of age, culture, abilities, bodies, ethnic origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, nationality, race, religion, or socioeconomic status.
These awards recognize excellence in the following areas:
Excellence
The Excellence Award honors a specific project that demonstrates overall excellence in one or more areas of digital curation or digital scholarship practice.
Award Criteria
Outstanding contributions may include, but are not limited to:
- Collaborative, inter-departmental and/or inter-institutional work on a digital curation or digital scholarship project.
- Unique use or development of a tool for digital curation or digital scholarship.
- Advancement of digital curation or digital scholarship standards (e.g. copyright, access, metadata, preservation).
- Creation of an innovative digital collection or a workflow for digital curation or digital scholarship projects.
Individual Impact
The Individual Impact Award honors an individual who has made significant contributions and improvements related to the field of digital curation and digital scholarship. Nominees have demonstrated their impact on fostering the development of students and early career professionals, facilitating communities, building infrastructure, and/or contributing to scholarship.
Award Criteria
Outstanding contributions may include, but are not limited to:
- Mentorship of professionals, interns, or students to foster the next generation of digital librarians, archivists, project managers, collections managers, and other associated professions.
- Demonstrated innovation and creativity in their field.
- Outstanding leadership in digital activities, initiatives, or organizations at the local, regional, or state level.
- Significant contributions to digital scholarship, literature, research, or best practices.
Outreach
The Outreach Award honors an individual or team that demonstrates a creative, innovative, and successful approach to increasing accessibility of digital information, promoting engagement among new users, or increasing public awareness of an organization’s digital collections.
Award Criteria
Outstanding contributions may include, but are not limited to:
- Marketing and outreach campaigns to promote a digital service, collection, or project. This could also include the promotion of open access practices and opportunities.
- Promotional events that showcase a digital service, collection, or project.
- Assessments or documentation that improve outreach practices, illustrate specific outcomes, or highlight ways in which digital repositories are used to enhance learning in the classroom and in fields of study.
- Creating support for a digital effort within an organization that has led to heightened recognition and/or increased resources for the project or institution.
- Developing and sustaining partnerships with organizations serving historically minoritized communities.
Scholarly Communication Impact
The Scholarly Communication Impact Award honors an individual or group that has demonstrated leadership in or advancement of scholarly communication.
Scholarly communication efforts increase the visibility and impact of an institution’s research and advance knowledge for the public good. Efforts under the scholarly communication umbrella include research support; serving faculty and scholars with publishing and copyright resources; supporting student success through open educational resources; managing and maintaining digital repositories and other tools for scholarly outputs; coordinating and promoting open academic journals; managing electronic theses and dissertations; and supporting library colleagues as a resource.
Nominees may include faculty, staff, and librarians who work in scholarly communication and have made significant contributions to advance the creation, discovery, dissemination, and preservation of scholarly works from their respective institutions.
Award Criteria
Outstanding contributions may include, but are not limited to promoting, enhancing, or facilitating the following:
- Institution-based publishing services (preferably open access).
- Data management services that improve project efficiency, funder compliance, and open access to data.
- Assessment and impact metrics services that inform the scholar’s strategy for intellectual contributions.
- Copyright services that empower scholars and steer them towards open access options and away from unfavorable license agreements and legal quagmires.
- Management of institutional repositories both on campus and externally.
- Research, research integrity, or other research-related support on campus.
- Open Educational Resources or course redesigns to include no-cost teaching resources.
- Demonstration of impact through campus communities and scholarly engagement regionally, nationally, and/or internationally.
Service
As a consortium, the Texas Digital Library (TDL) benefits from and depends on the contributions of time and expertise from all of its members. The Service Award honors TDL members (individuals or groups) who have made significant contributions to the TDL consortium and/or members who have used TDL services to their fullest potential. The Service Award nominations are determined by TDL staff only.
Award Criteria
Outstanding contributions to the TDL consortium may include, but are not limited to:
- Outstanding work by TDL User Groups, Working Groups, and Committees.
- Providing technical or professional expertise for the improvement and development of TDL service.
- Delivering presentations or posters about TDL membership or services.
- Promoting TDL services.
- Dedicating time and effort to write and edit documentation for various TDL services.
Outstanding use of TDL services may include, but are not limited to:
- Using TDL-hosted institutional repositories to share unique special collections.
- Using TDL services for multi-institutional collaboration.
- Transforming Graduate Schools with Vireo Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Submission system.
- Creating innovative scholarly publishing projects using TDL services.
Nominations from TDL staff are open to current institutional members of the Texas Digital Library consortium and employees. Individuals nominated for this award must have been employed by a member institution at the time the work was created.
Student Excellence
The Student Excellence Award honors an individual student who has demonstrated overall excellence and significant contributions to digital library practice.
Award Criteria
The contributions made by undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students are critical to maintaining, improving upon, and innovating digital library practices. This award honors the work of an individual student who demonstrates excellence in these areas.
Nominations for this award are open to students from Texas-based libraries and academic institutions. Individuals nominated must have been students in higher education at the time the work was created or performed. Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged. Membership in the Texas Digital Library consortium is not required to nominate or receive the award.
Texas Digital Library may award multiple Student Excellence Awards, contingent upon the quality and variety of student nominees.
Trailblazer
The Trailblazer Award honors the work of an individual or group who has used limited resources in innovative ways to create, maintain, or support digital collections. TDL strongly encourages applications from libraries, archives, and cultural heritage institutions that may not have full-time staff dedicated to digital projects but that have found creative and innovative ways to develop a digital presence.
Award Criteria
Outstanding contributions may include, but are not limited to:
- Innovative uses of technology resources.
- Digitization projects.
- Oral histories.
- Increasing accessibility to diverse collections.
- Capturing the experiences of historically marginalized communities.
- Effective working relationships regarding digital presences or projects and involving other people, departments, or organizations.
- Metadata and cataloging processes.
- Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) programs.
- Integration of digital collections into Information Literacy campaigns, outreach and publicity, curriculum guides, or other flexible and innovative uses of digital resources.
Nomination Requirements
To nominate an institution, project, group, or individual for one of the awards listed above, please complete the form linked below. To do so, you will need:
- Contact information for the nominee or nominated group to include names, email addresses, and mailing address (required), plus any URLs (optional).
- Your contact information (required).
- A justification statement (required).
- Supporting documentation/file uploads (optional; examples include but are not limited to letters of recommendation, workflows, awards received, publicity and publications, etc.).
- Agree to TCDL’s Code of Conduct.
Please note that only nominees, or at least one nominee for group applications, must be based in Texas or affiliated with a Texas institution to be eligible for TDL awards.
Winners
Winning nominations are selected by the TDL Awards Committee, and winners are notified in early spring. The TDL Awards Subcommittee reserves the right to amend the nominated award category as needed after reviewing all submissions. One winner from each award category will receive complimentary registration for the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (TCDL), and all award winners are honored during a special awards session at the conference. A description of the winning awards will be posted on the TDL website following the conference.
Award winners are encouraged to attend TCDL, but it is not required.
Both winners and nominees will be invited to share their work with the digital library community through blog posts, webinars, and/or TDL member forums. For questions about the criteria or processes for awards selection, please email info@tdl.org.