The 2019 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries brought together over 200 librarians, archivists, technologists, students, and information professionals to explore perspectives. All of us at Texas Digital Library found this year’s conference more fun and inspiring than ever. Below are just a few highlights listing the ways #tcdl2019 was our best TCDL yet.
We Broke Down Barriers
Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan (pictured above) led us on an interdisciplinary exploration of how Facebook and other social media disconnects us and undermines democracy. Dr. Vaidhyanathan’s keynote address examined the intersection where information practices, psychology, and international marketing meet – and was the conference highlight for many conference attendees. Many thanks to Dr. Vaidhyanathan, our panelists, presenters, pre-conference facilitators, and birds-of-a-feather hosts for helping all TCDL participants learn how to be better listeners and collaborators.
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We Engaged Our Community
The Texas Digital Library community fosters a welcoming environment to engage with fellow consortium members and meet future collaborators. Our annual conference, TCDL, is an invigorating and purposeful event because of the energy the TDL community brings – and this year’s conference saw the largest attendance yet. Representatives from over 60 organizations participated at TCDL 2019, including over 80 presenters. We saw a record number of proposals submitted from librarians, archivists, and technologists, and this year’s presenters offered bold, brilliant, and valuable ideas that inspired new collaborations.
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We Deepened Our Connections
TDL recognizes a need among library and archives staff for skills in listening, leadership, communication, facilitating difficult discussions, and negotiation. Thus, the first-ever Leadership Academy was born: a full day, ticketed event adjacent to TCDL that focused on building skills necessary for leading at all levels of the library. Our conference committee organized this special workshop for early and mid-career library and archives staff involving a mix of hands-on activities and presentations that built on attendees’ strengths. Participants have cultivated a cohort of fellow learners who, together, are seeking a professional community for support and growth.
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We Celebrated Excellence
The 2019 awards winners represent a variety of institutions and projects. Digital humanities, digital preservation, digital scholarship, and open access projects at academic libraries and community archives from Texas and beyond are among this year’s winners, showcasing the cross disciplinary and inter-institutional partnerships that libraries and archives leverage so well. Learn more and get inspired by this year’s award winners at https://main.tdl.org/awards/winners/.
From discounted registration to volunteer opportunities, TDL provides a number of ways for students to engage. And for the first time this year, Texas Digital Library offered a TCDL Student Scholarship. Seven students were awarded registration for the first ever TDL Leadership Academy as well as the 2019 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries. Congratulations to our student scholarship winners and a big thank you to our donors who made this scholarship and professional development opportunities a reality for Texas iSchool students.
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We Broadened the Possibilities
TCDL 2019 yielded a record number of sponsors, many of whom were brand new to our conference and our community. Thanks to the generous support of 11 sponsors, we were able to make significant improvements to our conference experience resulting in the highest number of proposals, TDL award nominations, and registrations to date.
Access Level Sponsors $5000+
- Texas Digital Library
Connect Level Sponsors $2500+
- Keynote Sponsor: Amigos Library Services
- Code Ocean
Capacity Level Sponsors $1000+
- Digital Library Federation
- EBSCO
Network Level Sponsors $500+
- The Dataverse Project
- Library Juice Academy
- Pressbooks
Leadership Academy Sponsors $250+
- Duke University Press
- Northeast Document Conservation Center
- University of Texas at Austin School of Information
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Thank You, Planning Committee
TDL Members serve on the TCDL Planning Committee and work on the conference for ten months out of the year. Thanks to the outreach of the planning committee and TDL staff, this year’s TCDL was a huge success.
- Shelley Barba, Texas Tech University
- Jon Crossno, UT Southwestern
- Taylor Davis-Van Atta, University of Houston
- Taylor Fairweather, West Texas A&M University
- Clarke Iakovakis (chair), Oklahoma State University
- Kara Long, Baylor University
- Marcia McIntosh (vice-chair), University of North Texas
- Jeremy Moore, University of Tennessee Knoxville
- Jessica Neal, Trinity University
- Mark Phillips, University of North Texas
- Sarah Potvin, Texas A&M University
- Linda Reynolds, Stephen F. Austin State University
- Kristen Weischedel, UT Rio Grande Valley
- Amanda Zerangue, Texas Woman’s University
Until next time…
The Texas Conference on Digital Libraries happens once a year, but there are lots of ways to stay engaged between now and #tcdl2020. We start building next year’s conference in August, which means we are on the lookout for committee members, program ideas, and sponsorships. And in the meantime, join us for monthly member forums, receive our e-newsletters, follow us on Twitter at @TXDigLibrary, and like us on Facebook at @texasdigitallibrary. See you in 2020!