February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 1 Copyright Mark McFarland 2006. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission.

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference

1

Copyright Mark McFarland 2006. 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


Addressing the Challenges

• A unified Texas Digital Library• Collaboration among Texas ARL’s (Association of Research Libraries)• Sharing of resources• Hard work• Patience


Partners

• Initially The 5 Texas ARL libraries: UT, A&M, TT, Rice, UH

• Later All of higher education in Texas


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


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


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


Services

• Institutional repositories• Learning object repositories• Course management systems• Scholarly publishing• Collections management• Preservation


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.


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.


Course management systems

Courseware management adds services to manage the day to day operations of a class and builds upon the learning object repository.


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.


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.


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.


Technologies

• Open source software• Open archives initiative• Internet2 and LEARN• Web• Standards


Network

• Lonestar Education and Research Network

• 1 Gigabit Dedicated Link for TDL

• Multiprotocol L2 Transport


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





TDL Architectural Layers

Network Internet 2

LearnPOPS, dark archive

MiddlewareShibboleth OAI-PMH

SRB Preservation Software (eg LOCKSS)

Workflow Directory Services

EnablersDSpace Fedora ADORE SAKAI

Connexions Eprints Dpubs

ServicesIR’s

LORS Course management Scholarly publishing

Collection management Preservation

Architectural Layers


Organization

• Executive committee• Technical committee• Staff in Austin (small)• Contributed resources from collaborating partners

Executive CommitteeLibrary Directors

Co-Directors of TDLMark McFarland

John Leggett

Steering Committee John LeggettCharles Bailey Mark

McFarlandGeneva Henry Robert Sweet

TDL Official StaffProposed TDL Advisory Groups

*active

Administrative AssistantHillary Spiller

Systems AdministratorPhillip Mattingly

Systems ProgrammerHiring in Process

Metadata Group*IR/LORPublishing Collections Disaster Planning Systems GroupPreservationFaculty Advisory Board


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


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


The Texas Digital Library will surely become one of the most important tools for research

and education in Texas for the future.

February 22, 2006 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 1 Copyright Mark McFarland 2006. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission.

Documents

texas slide

scholarly communication

learning object repositories

research output

faculty research pages

core research

digital infrastructure

individual research