The TDR Steering Committee Annual Meeting provides a dedicated in‑person working session for committee members to review progress, conduct business, and define strategic priorities for the coming year. This session allows members to assess user and member activity within the Texas Data Repository, evaluate ongoing initiatives, address challenges, and identify opportunities for growth and community engagement. Discussion topics will include operational updates, review of repository metrics, coordination around member needs, planning for upcoming enhancements, and voting on action items.
This meeting is intended for TDR Steering Committee members and their institutional colleagues who support TDR operations. Guests may be admitted on an ad hoc basis with approval from the committee, but only official committee members will vote. As a working meeting, the session will focus on discussion, collaboration, and decision‑making rather than formal presentations or lectures.
Courtney Mumma is an archivist, librarian, and the Deputy Director of the Texas Digital Library consortium, where one of her roles is managing Digital Preservation Services using distributed digital preservation systems including Chronopolis and DuraCloud@TDL. She has worked in web... Read More →
How Libraries can Leverage AI to Help Researchers Find Joy in Research Again By: Joshua Been & Millicent Weber
While research should focus on exploration and discovery, the joy of inquiry is often lost amidst a sea of tedious tasks and technical friction. In this presentation, we will demonstrate how academic libraries are uniquely positioned to reverse this trend by acting as the bridge between complex AI capabilities and daily researcher workflows. We propose that academic libraries should bolster AI literacy to demystify how AI works, teach the art of effective prompting, and design robust workflows that help to automate the tedious parts of research.
We will showcase this model through practical examples across the social sciences, humanities, and STEM. Case studies will include automating the tedious data extraction process for evidence synthesis projects and leveraging AI to handle complex OCR tasks, such as messy handwritten ledgers. We will also show how AI supports data analysis by suggesting methods, generating Python or R code, and interpreting results.
This session will demonstrate how empowering users with AI literacy allows them to offload the boring work. It helps them return to the creative and joyful heart of scholarship.
Integrating scholarly communication concepts into liaison librarianship By: Colleen Lyon & Casey Ruegger
In the course of their work with departments, liaison librarians may be asked to speak or answer questions about scholarly communication related topics like open access, repositories, copyright, and OER. While many liaisons are familiar with scholarly communication issues, they may be unsure of good resources to point their researchers to or how to engage their researchers in these discussions. Many library resources are focused on “skilling up” liaison librarians on scholarly communication topics, but there seem to be a lack of resources that discuss examples of integrating scholarly communication into liaison work. The presenters will try to fill this gap by talking about the ways they’ve integrated scholarly communication concepts into their liaison work, and about resources they’ve created to make it easier for others to integrate scholarly communication into their work.
Casey Ruegger is the Education Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin. She is interested in scholarly communication, evidence synthesis, and how liaison librarians can support authors with open access and increasing the visibility of their research.
Assistant Director, Research Data Services, Texas State University
Talk to me about library-based digital publishing, open access, and research data management. Also books of all kinds, dogs, cats, traveling, or Gilmore Girls :)
Thursday June 4, 2026 12:30pm - 1:30pm CDT Longhorn10100 Burnet Rd Building 137, Austin, TX 78758
The annual in-person meeting of the TDL DSpace Users Group (DUG) is open to all conference attendees interested in the DSpace open repository platform. This year’s meeting will provide opportunities for DSpace users to share about their repository operations and challenges, feature an update on the status of on-going DSpace development at the global level, and provide updates on upgrades of TDL-hosted DSpace repositories.
The TDL DUG works to create an active community among DSpace users that facilitates mutual support for DSpace use and repository management; takes on collective projects for the benefit of the TDL consortium; and connects the TDL user community to the global open source DSpace community.
Charity Martin began her career over 20 years ago as a serials cataloger. Since then, she has worked both public and technical services; in academic, public and corporate libraries; and in public education.
