Home › The TDL Community › TDL Awards

TDL Awards

Main text: "TDL AWARDS" in sage green. Background: The TDL Awards logo is centered prominently on a watercolor-style background that reflects the TCDL 2027 theme branding. The logo consists of a stylized star above the words "TDL AWARDS" in sage green. The Texas Digital Library logo appears in sage green in the lower right corner. The background incorporates a light green center (#fbffef) surrounded by watercolor-style textures using the TCDL 2027 sage green color palette (#626d57, #89977a, #9fa98d, and #d0d897). The overall design evokes a natural, garden-inspired aesthetic that aligns with the From Seedling to Evergreen: Rooted in Community theme.

Table of Contents

Overview

2027 TDL Awards Nominations Are Open

We encourage you to submit nominations to celebrate the people and projects advancing digital libraries, archives, and scholarship across Texas.

Winners will be honored during the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (TCDL) on May 25, 2027, in Austin, Texas.

The Texas Digital Library (TDL) Awards recognize Texas-based individuals, teams, and projects that have made outstanding contributions to digital libraries, digital scholarship, digital preservation, and access to digital content.

Digital libraries are defined broadly and include work conducted by libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and other cultural heritage organizations.

Anyone who contributes to digital scholarship or the preservation, management, or access of digital content is eligible for nomination.

  • Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged.
  • Nominees and nominators do not need to be affiliated with a TDL member institution.
  • Only nominees, or at least one nominee for a group nomination, must be based in Texas or affiliated with a Texas institution.
  • There is no limit to how many nominations you submit, and you may submit nominations for multiple award categories.

back to top

Nomination Requirements

To nominate an individual, team, project, or organization, complete the TDL Awards Nomination Form.

Required Information

  • Nominator information
  • Nominee information
  • Award category
  • Statement of justification
  • Agreement to the TDL Code of Conduct

Optional Supporting Documentation

Supporting documentation is not required, but encouraged.

Examples include:

  • Letters of recommendation
  • Workflows
  • Awards received
  • Publicity materials
  • Publications
  • Project documentation

Supporting documentation may be emailed to tcdl-awards@utlists.utexas.edu.

Please include:

  • Your name
  • Nominee name
  • Award category

back to top

Award Categories

The TDL 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 the digital library 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.

back to top

Individual Impact

The Individual Impact Award honors an individual who has made significant contributions and improvements related to the field of digital library services. 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.

back to top

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.

back to top

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.

back to top

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.

back to top

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.

back to top

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.

back to top

Important Dates

  • November 11, 2026 | Nominations Open
  • February 5, 2027 | Nominations Close
  • March 2027 | Award Notifications
  • May 25, 2027 | TDL Awards Ceremony at TCDL 2027

back to top

Submit a Nomination

TDL Awards Nomination Form

back to top

Winners

Winning nominations are selected by the TDL Awards Subcommittee.

The TDL Awards Subcommittee reserves the right to amend a nomination’s award category after reviewing submissions.

One winner from each award category will receive complimentary registration to the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (TCDL).

Award winners are recognized during the TDL Awards Ceremony at TCDL. Award winners are encouraged to attend TCDL, but attendance is not required.

An announcement of the award winners will be featured on the TDL blog following the conference. Both winners and nominees are encouraged to share their work with the TDL community through blog posts, webinars, and/or TDL Forums. Check out the Get Involved page.

View past TDL Awards winners

back to top

Questions

For questions regarding the TDL Awards, contact info@tdl.org or tcdl-awards@utlists.utexas.edu.