News

The 2024 TRLN Annual Meeting will be held at The Friday Conference Center in Chapel Hill on Monday, July 29. We are excited to return to a full-day, in-person meeting format and hope you can join us!

Registration is open for the 2024 TRLN Annual Meeting at https://bit.ly/24TRLNregister. Registration will close at 5:00pm on Monday, July 22.

The full schedule is available at https://trln.org/event/2024-trln-annual-meeting/#schedule.

Registration in advance helps with our planning and is much appreciated. Regardless of when you register and what you register for, you will receive Annual Meeting information and session confirmations via email a week before the event and a reminder on the morning of the event. All event updates can be found at https://trln.org/event/2024-trln-annual-meeting and contact events@trln.org with any questions.

For the first time since 2019, the 2024 TRLN Annual Meeting will be a fully in-person event! On Monday, July 29, we’ll be convening in Chapel Hill, to reunite and regroup in the newly renovated Friday Center. Given that five years have passed since we last met in person, the Annual Meeting Steering Committee is structuring plenty of time and space to gather around timely topics that will help us take stock and chart our course into the future.

We are inviting proposals for three types of sessions:

1. Presentations (5, 20, or 45 minutes), to inform colleagues about projects and activities, such as a mentoring program, a digitization project, or an exhibition. (You can take advantage of this opportunity to practice presenting for future conferences or professional meetings.)
2. Workshops (1 or 2 hours), to educate or train colleagues on a particular skill or domain of knowledge, such as copyright, including cataloging, licensing of electronic materials, developing a budget, project management.
3. Discussions (1 or 2 hours), to engage with colleagues on a timely and relevant topic, such as artificial intelligence, Alma transitions, international area studies and global collections, ASERL professional development retreats, finance and administration, accessibility, library communications.

Submit a proposal by 11:59pm on June 3 at https://bit.ly/trln2024cfp. 

We encourage proposals from anyone who works in a TRLN member library. Collaborative sessions with colleagues from multiple institutions also are encouraged. 

All submissions will be reviewed by the Annual Meeting Steering Committee and selections will be announced by June 14.

For more information about the 2024 Annual Meeting, visit the event page at https://trln.org/event/2024-trln-annual-meeting.  Reach out to events@trln.org if you have any questions!

The 2023 CLIR events included the DLF Forum and NDSA DigiPres held in St. Louis, Missouri November 12 through 16.

Featured Speakers

The Forum started with a fascinating and insightful talk about “gaming as a place where Black history and culture can be told outside conventional tropes and stereotypes that often pervade media” by Dr. Kishonna Gray entitled “Archiving Cultures: Gaming as Black Digital Storytelling”.

Recording of Dr. Kishonna Gray’s DLF Forum Opening Plenary

NDSA DigiPress featured a talk from Dr. Jamie Lee entitled “Kairotic and Kin-centric Archives: Addressing Abundances and Abandonments” to “reveal the practices, pedagogies, and possibilities of working in, with, and for non-dominant communities in the maintenance of their memories as bodies of knowledge, experiences, affects, and relations”.

Recording of Dr. Jamie Lee’s NDSA DigiPress Opening Plenary

Sessions of Note

Several sessions featuring TRLN colleagues included:

• “Expanding a Model for Collections as Data Work to Identify Jim Crow Laws Across Multiple Southern States” (https://osf.io/qm78j/)
• “Launching D-CRAFT: the Digital Content Reuse Assessment Toolkit” (https://sched.co/1On4Q)
• “Virtualization for Processing and Accessing Digital Archives” (https://osf.io/76ejw/)
• “Building a New Skill Takes Time and Directed Effort: a Practice Plan for Learning the Command Line” (https://sched.co/1On6Y)
• “Dualites of Digital Curation” (https://sched.co/1On72)

Helpful Links

• DLF Forum schedule
• DLF Forum slides
• NDSA DigiPres schedule
• NDSA DigiPres slides

TRLN is excited to announce one recipient of the final round of IDEA funding: “Islamic and Persian Bookbinding Workshop with Yasmeen Khan”.

About the Project

Submitted by Erin Hammeke (Duke), “Islamic and Persian Bookbinding Workshop with Yasmeen Khan” will be a multi-day workshop on historic Islamic and Persian bookbindings taught by Yasmeen Khan, Head of Paper Conservation at the Library of Congress.

There are almost 100,000 books in Arabic and Persian languages held across TRLN libraries. This workshop will allow conservation staff to more competently care for collection materials from a wider range of geographic and cultural areas in the Islamic world.

The workshop will include lectures on Islamic bookbindings and their conservation. Students will produce an Islamic and/or Persian bookbinding historical model. The class will examine Islamic and Persian bookbindings from Duke’s Rubenstein Library collections to learn about their historic and cultural context.

Students will have a better sense of Islamic material culture and specific language for Islamic bindings. Having enhanced knowledge of Islamic and Persian bookbindings, including their unique structures, will allow staff to better care for these materials across the TRLN collections.

About IDEA Funding

TRLN seeks to support our member institutions’ work in inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility with project funding. Staff members at any TRLN library can apply for funding for a variety of projects that further their library’s and TRLN’s goals to establish or advance inclusion, diversity, equity, or accessibility efforts.

The Executive Committee approved a total of $100,000 of funding, to be distributed across two years (two funding cycles per year). Learn more about this funding.

Contact info@trln.org with any questions about this project or TRLN’s IDEA funding.

TRLN is again welcoming proposals for IDEA funding. A total of $25,000 is available for the Fall 2023 round of funding. Although proposals are invited on a semi-annual basis, funded projects may extend past or be scheduled outside of this timeframe, depending on scope and needs.

Learn more about TRLN’s IDEA funding including how to submit a proposal. Contact info@trln.org with any questions.

Important Dates

• October 2 : submission deadline
• October 9 : funded projects announced

On June 21, TRLN went live with ReShare Returnables – an open source resource sharing platform. ReShare is now the engine for our consortial borrowing and lending program – TRLN Direct.

This change to patrons was largely invisible and intended to be so, but the change to ReShare Returnables brings great improvements for staff working in these services and ultimately, improves patrons’ experiences.

What is ReShare?

ReShare is both a platform and a community. TRLN has long been a member of the ReShare community to guide the development of the platform and we are very excited to be using it now.

ReShare Returnables is the first module we implemented to manage the borrowing and lending of physical materials, but an exciting part of the ReShare community is the opportunity to adopt other community developed modules for non-returnables and controlled digital lending.

TRLN member libraries have been sharing resources for decades. Given our close geographic proximity, sharing materials is one of our core activities. We’re pleased to make our longstanding and successful service even better. It’s especially exciting to improve our own service through participation in a creative and collaborative community that has prioritized open source approaches to supporting libraries.”

Lisa Croucher, Executive Director of TRLN

About Our Implementation

Although our work with ReShare goes back to being a founding member of the community, our local effort to adopt Reshare Returnables started with a thorough evaluation and comparison of other platforms throughout the Spring of 2022 – resulting in a recommendation to adopt ReShare Returnables.

The ReShare Implementation Working Group formed in June 2022 with a goal of going live in the Summer of 2023. We partnered with Index Data, a longstanding development partner of the platform and community, to host and implement ReShare Returnables.

ReShare Returnables relies on a shared source of records to know both what items we have in our collections and what can be loaned. We decided to contribute our MARC data to POD, where the records could easily be harvested by Index Data and searched by ReShare.

Now that we are live with ReShare, we join a peer group of several library consortiums already using the platform – Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation, PALCI, and ConnectNY. TRLN is excited to be part of this community of users.

With great gratitude, we want to thank the ReShare Implementation Working Group members for their work as part of this implementation. Members include:

• Duke University
  • Michael Edwards, Resource Sharing Librarian
  • Andrea Loigman, Head, Access and Delivery Services
  • Erin Nettifee, IT Business Analyst
• NC Central
  • Vickie Spencer, Head Circulation Librarian
  • Yan Wang, Systems Librarian
• NC State University
  • Mia Partlow, Resource Sharing Librarian
  • Thomas Jones, Access Services University Library Specialist
  • Kristen Wilson, Discovery Systems Manager
• UNC at Chapel Hill
  • Renée Bosman, Government Information Librarian
  • Ashleigh Donaldson, Borrowing Assistant
  • Jamie McGarty, Library Software Applications Developer
  • Joe Moran, Systems Administrator
  • David Pierpont, Saturday and Carrels Supervisor
• TRLN
  • Kelly Farrell, Program Officer (Project lead)
  • Genia Kazymova, Applications Developer

Reach out to info@trln.org with any questions.

TRLN is now inviting proposals for workshops, presentations, and lightning talks for the 2023 Annual Meeting being held on July 17 and 18.

Submit a proposal at bit.ly/trln2023cfp (link to form will open in a new tab). The deadline to submit a proposal is June 2, 2023.

Proposals of up to 150 words should be submitted along with an abbreviated abstract of 50 words that will be included on the annual meeting website.

About Presenting

Who can present?

Anyone who works in a TRLN member institution. We welcome proposals of any domain, area of expertise, and library. We also encourage partnering with colleagues to co-present.

How long can presentations be?

Presentations ranging from 5 minute lightning talks, 30 minute presentations, or longer workshops will be considered. Sessions will be grouped into blocks.

Will I present virtually or in-person?

This year, we are exploring how we might be able to offer more in-person opportunities so we included a question in the submission form about if you would be willing to present in-person to assist in our planning.

Once we close the call for proposals, TRLN staff will follow up with you about your preference for how you present. If you have questions about presenting either in-person or virtually, please reach out to events@trln.org.

When will I hear if my proposal has been accepted?

All submissions will be reviewed by the Annual Meeting Steering Committee and selections will be announced by June 7.

Reach out to events@trln.org if you have any questions!

The 2023 Annual Meeting will be held on July 17 and 18! We will announce the keynotes, open a call for proposals, and share more details in the coming weeks, but save the date for July 17 and 18.

Reach out to events@trln.org with any questions.

TRLN is again welcoming proposals for IDEA funding. A total of $25,000 is available for the Spring 2023 round of funding. Although proposals are invited on a semi-annual basis, funded projects may extend past or be scheduled outside of this timeframe, depending on scope and needs.

Learn more about TRLN’s IDEA funding including how to submit a proposal. Contact info@trln.org with any questions.

Important Dates

• March 31 : submission deadline
• April 14 : awardees announced

With support from TRLN’s IDEA funding, North Carolina Central University’s James E. Shepard Memorial Library is presenting “Celebrating 50 Years of Hip Hop” with several events throughout March and April 2023.

Schedule

Book Talk with Justin Tinsley

March 30, 2023 at 1:00pm

NCCU School of Nursing Auditorium

Poetry Jam

April 4, 2023 at 2:30pm

Shepard Library 2nd Floor

Shepard Library will host a poetry jam that features spoken word artists, poets, and rappers. This event will feature a DJ, NCCU’s Hip Hop Dance Crew, and will be hosted by student leaders. This event is designed to give students an outlet through which they can express their creativity, engage in a creative process with peers, and celebrate 50 years of Hip Hop with the larger campus community and the community at large.

Art Exhibit & Contest

April 6, 2023 at 10:30am

Shepard Library Bowl

Students from TRLN schools will be invited to submit original works of art that pay tribute to Hip Hop.