February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 1 Copyright Mark McFarland This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

A digital infrastructure for the scholarly activities of Texas universities

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 3 Challenges Increasing demands on research and education infrastructure Underutilized intellectual capital on campuses Global movement to transform scholarly communication

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 4 Addressing the Challenges A unified Texas Digital Library Collaboration among Texas ARL’s (Association of Research Libraries) Sharing of resources Hard work Patience

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 5 Partners Initially The 5 Texas ARL libraries: UT, A&M, TT, Rice, UH Later All of higher education in Texas

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 6 TDL Center of excellence for the creation, curation, and preservation of digital scholarly information for the State Repository for research output: –electronic theses and dissertations –faculty datasets, departmental databases, digital archives –course management and learning materials –digital media, special collections, etc. Platform for continued leadership in evolving scholarly communication systems

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 7 TDL Provides an innovative organizational model that effectively leverages advanced technology Produces institutional efficiencies in operations, equipment, and staffing Provides a testbed for research Advances our core research and teaching missions

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 8 Location Initially Central facility in Austin at UT Distributed centers at the 5 Texas ARLs Later Each university will likely have repositories of their own

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 9 Services Institutional repositories Learning object repositories Course management systems Scholarly publishing Collections management Preservation

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 10 Institutional Repositories Institutional repositories provide a secure storage facility for faculty and student material, while increasing the awareness and access capabilities for other researchers and the public. Typical uses include faculty research pages organized by college and department or individual research unit; a faculty self-archiving service for working papers, preprints, postprints and datasets; technical report series collections; and, the institution’s Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) collection.

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 11 Learning object repositories Learning object repositories provide a secure storage facility for the materials used in teaching and learning, while increasing the awareness, access and reusability for other faculty and the public. Typical materials include slide sets, audio/video lectures, notes, syllabi, and bibliographies. Courseware management adds services to manage the day to day operations of a class and builds upon the learning object repository.

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 12 Course management systems Courseware management adds services to manage the day to day operations of a class and builds upon the learning object repository.

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 13 Scholarly publishing The Texas Digital Library Press will provide scholarly publishing services for the State. An open access, peer-reviewed, archival journal service will provide workflow models and secure storage to host scholarly community journals. Edited manuscripts and refereed conference proceedings will be accepted, archived, distributed electronically, and printed on-demand. The TDL press will also engage in explorations of new models of scholarly communication. The goal will be to support faculty, students, and staff with the highest quality and most timely information possible.

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 14 Collections management Collection management will provide curatorial services and a secure storage facility for the digitized artifacts found in our university archives and museums, as well as the scientific collections of our faculty. These collections run the gamut of all scientific and scholarly investigation. In addition, the TDL will seek to preserve those collections of great worth that might be in danger of being lost due to deterioration or neglect.

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 15 Preservation Preservation is inherently a part of each of the other services. Robust preservation services are difficult to provide for digital collections and require distributed resource sharing and collaboration. The TDL will remove this concern from our faculties.

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 16 Technologies Open source software Open archives initiative Internet2 and LEARN Web Standards

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 17 Network Lonestar Education and Research Network 1 Gigabit Dedicated Link for TDL Multiprotocol L2 Transport

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 18 Status Lots of activity behind the scenes –Metadata standards for ETDs –Funding and Organization –Technical Briefing Dec. 13, 2005 in Austin Target: February 1, 2006 –Website –Open Journal System Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) –Federated Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations

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February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 22 TDL Architectural Layers Network Internet 2 Learn POPS, dark archive Middleware Shibboleth OAI-PMH SRB Preservation Software (eg LOCKSS) Workflow Directory Services Enablers DSpace Fedora ADORE SAKAI Connexions Eprints Dpubs Services IR’s LORS Course management Scholarly publishing Collection management Preservation Architectural Layers

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 23 Organization Executive committee Technical committee Staff in Austin (small) Contributed resources from collaborating partners

Executive Committee Library Directors Co-Directors of TDL Mark McFarland John Leggett Steering Committee John Leggett Charles Bailey Mark McFarland Geneva Henry Robert Sweet TDL Official Staff Administrative Assistant Hillary Spiller Systems Administrator Phillip Mattingly Systems Programmer Hiring in Process Proposed TDL Advisory Groups *active Metadata Group* IR/LOR Publishing Collections Disaster Planning Systems Group Preservation Faculty Advisory Board

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 25 Impacts Increases the institution’s visibility and impact Increases value of intellectual capital by increasing accessibility to products of scholarship and research Increases competitiveness for research funding Maximizes the research capabilities of faculties by increasing the pace of scholarly dissemination and discovery

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 26 Impacts, cont. Increases stature as a leader in developing new working models for publication and dissemination of scholarly, research, and educational information Advances core teaching and research missions by fostering innovation in education and research Preserves intellectual assets for future generations of researchers, teachers, students, and scholars

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 27 The Texas Digital Library will surely become one of the most important tools for research and education in Texas for the future.