Texas Digital Library engages students from our home institution, the University of Texas at Austin, in capstone projects. Our projects with UT’s iSchool students are designed to build capacity for collaboration and resource sharing among the members of the TDL consortium. Please take a moment to look over previous projects listed in reverse chronological order by year below.
If you are a graduate student pursuing your MSIS/MLIS and you have a capstone project in mind and/or are interested in gaining experience with Texas Digital Library, our services, and/or our members, please contact us at info@tdl.org. View our collection of capstone projects in TDL’s repository.
2021
Open Access Engagement: A Look Inside University Repositories
In the spring semester of 2021, UT iSchool Masters candidate Emily Vernon focused her capstone project on assessing user perception of and engagement with TDL members’ open access repositories.
The assessment was conducted via interviews with eight repository managers – six of whom manage TDL-hosted DSpace repositories. The goal of the project was to elucidate patterns and understandings of the usage of TDL’s repositories, which are vital in disseminating information in a free, open, and accessible manner.
Emily’s work over the three-month project elucidated consistent patterns across university repositories. The report linked below names a few of these patterns, as well as notes how some institutions might improve usage by and outreach to students and faculty.
- Download Emily’s report from TDL’s Capstone Collection
- View Emily’s virtual poster presentation from TCDL 2021
Texas Dataverse Repository Dataverse Integration with R
In the spring semester of 2021, Anna Pechenina, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of North Texas, partnered with Dr. Reid Boehm, Research Data Management Librarian at the University of Houston and member of Texas Digital Library’s Texas Data Repository Steering Committee, to explore the use of the R client for Dataverse.
From Anna’s poster abstract: “As a part of the Open Research, Open Data, and other Open initiatives, the Texas Data Repository (TDR) is currently exploring the integration and use of R client for Dataverse repositories by way of the R dataverse package. This integration supports open science and reproducible research by enabling researchers to seamlessly discover, retrieve, and archive data and metadata using RStudio interface. In this poster we describe the process of TDR Dataverse integration, testing of use cases, and creating documentation. We share the learnings and roadblocks we’ve encountered and provide suggestions on how other institutions can take advantage of these tools.”
2020
Fall 2020 UT Austin iSchool Digital Libraries Coursework
In summer and fall of 2020, Texas Digital Library lent assistance with planning, speaker recruitment, and in-class management for a UT Austin iSchool course about Digital Libraries.
TDL hosted two student groups who devoted their final projects to working with TDL in developing a Collections as Data toolkit for TDL members, creating a visualization of TDL’s collection of TCDL conference proceedings, and researching associations and groups that convene librarians and archivists.
Working with this course introduced library and information science students to TDL’s work both as a service provider and community convener, in addition to connecting students with professionals working in libraries and archives across Texas.
Collections as Data
A team of three students, Karla Roig Blay, Anne Morgan, and Katy Tuck, create an introduction to collections as data for TDL members, tailoring recommendations for using collections as data to TDL and member repositories.
Survey of Conveners
TDL continually seeks potential collaborations with organizations that align with TDL’s mission, serve similar organizations and members, or could benefit from TDL’s resources. Three iSchool students, Amanda Hildebrand, Marisa Jefferson, and Rachel Walfoort, identified and contacted organizations that are potential collaboration partners with TDL and our member institutions.
Digital Imaging Inventory Project
In the spring semester of 2020, UT iSchool Masters candidate Elizabeth Buchanan focused her capstone project on surveying the digitization needs of all Texas Digital Library members.
Elizabeth’s Digital Imaging Inventory Project required that she survey the member institutions of the TDL consortium in order to better understand their digitization needs and to identify “hidden” special collections that would particularly benefit from digitization.
Using the results of the survey, Elizabeth then assessed a wide number of digitization labs in the state of Texas and beyond, thereby creating a Lab Location Tool to allow TDL’s members to locate and partner with labs that will best meet the digitization needs of their unique collections.
Elizabeth’s work over the three-month project highlighted the complex responsibilities of TDL members who manage imaging projects and digitization labs, as well as provided us with foundational data to help us improve collaborative digitization projects across the consortium in the future.
- Download Elizabeth’s report from TDL’s repository
- Visit Elizabeth’s Lab Location Tool page
- View Elizabeth’s Digitization Lab Tool in Google Drive
TDL Member Skillshare Directory
This directory, created by Jonathon Youssefnia using the Dynamic User Directory WordPress plugin, was the result of a Capstone Project for the University of Texas at Austin School of Information. The goal was to facilitate collaboration between the many talented professionals within the Texas Digital Library community. Information for the directory was gathered via a survey in the Spring of 2020.
- This directory is no longer active.
Data Curation in the Texas Data Repository
Brenna Wheeler created a data curation workflow based on the Data Curation Network’s CURATE(D) Model to improve the findability and reusability of datasets for their capstone project with the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. The workflow is localized to the UT Austin Dataverse using needs identified in interviews with liaison librarians and an assessment of published datasets in the repository. The final product is a specialized Data Curation workflow and a list of recommendations that may be used by a team of liaison librarians to curate new datasets in the future.
Accessibility Audit
In the summer semester of 2020, UT iSchool Masters candidate and former TDL Helpdesk Technician Katherine Smithroat focused her capstone project on auditing the accessibility of a few of Texas Digital Library’s service offerings.
A detailed assessment of the accessibility of Texas Digital Library hosted services, with an emphasis on DSpace repository hosting services and the accessibility of other TDL hosted services such as OJS Open Journal Systems, Dataverse, and Vireo Dissertation and Thesis management software. The focus of the study was on assessing the interfaces for each of these programs, and some preliminary assessments of the content hosted in each of these programs. This project of work will serve as a baseline analysis and plan of action guide for future development work in making Texas Digital Library’s website and services more accessible to a broader audience, affecting all member institutions including major state Universities such as The University of Texas System and The Texas A&M University System.
2019
Digital Collections Inventory Project
In the spring semester of 2019, UT iSchool Masters candidate Rachael Zipperer focused her capstone project on surveying the digital collections of all Texas Digital Library members. After interviewing digital repository managers and digital archivists at each of our member institutions, Rachael created a report that identifies collecting strengths across these institutions and has highlighted some of the collecting areas through a social media campaign and digital exhibit, Unknown and Unidentified.
Rachael’s work over the three-month project celebrates the unique and enduring collections of academic libraries throughout Texas. Rachael posted updates about her project during Preservation Week 2019.
Read Rachael’s blog posts: