News

TRLN’s Executive Committee approved a recommendation made by the ReShare Evaluation Task Group to implement ReShare Returnables and form a working group to undertake this implementation. 

The ReShare Implementation Working Group (RIWG) will plan for, implement, coordinate training for, and document the ReShare Returnables product as used by TRLN. Additionally, they will coordinate sunsetting Relais D2D since it will be replaced by ReShare Returnables. Reach out to info@trln.org with any questions about this group or its work.

Members

Timeline

Below is a high level timeline and a more detailed timeline is available within the group’s charge. The RIWG will complete the tasks outlined within to the best of their ability, but with an overall goal of implementing ReShare Returnables in May 2023.

Charge

The TRLN Discovery Metadata Team recently created a public list of requests for subject heading remappings so people can more easily review what has already been requested and the status of the request. Access the list at https://bit.ly/trlnsubjects.

Learn more about this program at https://trln.org/resources/subject-remapping/ and reach out to metadata@trln.org with any questions.

The 2022 TRLN Annual Meeting will be Monday, July 11 and Tuesday, July 12. This year we will be meeting in person at the Carolina Theatre on the first day and online for the second. This year’s theme will be “Sustainability: Social Equity, Economics, and Environment”.

The meeting will feature two keynote speakers, panels and presentations from your TRLN colleagues, and more! The event page will continue to be updated with details as we get closer to the Annual Meeting. If you have any questions, please contact events@trln.org.

TRLN is excited to announce the first recipient of IDEA funding will be the project “UNC Black Faculty Vanguard” proposed by Sarah Carrier – North Carolina Research and Instruction Librarian for UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Special Collections Library.

About project

The purpose of this project is to locate and digitize primary documents/artifacts about the first Black faculty members at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1966 – 1973. These materials, primarily housed at Wilson Special Collections Library, will be organized to tell the stories of the first Black faculty members and speak to one essential part of the overall story of desegregation at UNC-Chapel Hill. The project will culminate in an online digital exhibit built in Omeka featuring each of the first Black faculty members, plus a timeline of the era.

Wilson Special Collections Library is where UNC history is researched and preserved. There exists no single resource for researchers or for community members to gain an overall view and understanding of the individual stories of the first Black faculty at UNC, nor their impact on the University as a whole. In fact, the realities and lived experiences of the entire desegregation era is still in many ways not as well understood as it could be, considering the immense interest in race at UNC-Chapel Hill. By learning from this vanguard’s lived experiences, this collective insight will instruct communities on and off campus about the realities of desegregating the faculty at the nation’s first public university.

The content of the Omeka exhibit to be published in the Fall of 2022.

Potential for collaboration

This project will be focused on the very first Black faculty members at UNC-Chapel Hill, but the ideal outcome is connect and collaborate with other TRLN institutions to either create and explicitly coordinate digital resources related to vanguard Black faculty at all TRLN institutions – to honor their efforts and their contributions in building our universities. Together, these resources will fulfill a research need and forge community connection.

In collaboration with Sarah Carrier, TRLN staff are exploring how this project can connect to similar work at Duke, NCCU, and NC State.

About TRLN’s 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). The next call for proposals will open in Summer 2022. Learn more about this funding.

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

TRLN announces the first round of funding to support member libraries’ work in inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA). The Executive Committee has allocated $50,000 per year for two years to fund IDEA projects and activities. We are eager to see the ideas that emerge. The application deadline for the Spring 2022 funding cycle is March 25. Details are available on the TRLN IDEA Funding page. Contact info@trln.org with questions or to discuss a potential proposal.

TRLN is now inviting proposals for presentations and workshops for the 2021 Annual Meeting being held virtually on July 29 and 30.

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.

What topics should presentations be about?

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. If you have an idea for a longer workshop, please submit your idea and if selected, TRLN staff can coordinate scheduling this workshop around the same time as the annual meeting.

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 July 2.

Can I pre-record my presentation?

Yes! If you prefer to pre-record your presentation, TRLN staff can work with you to record your presentation and stream it during a scheduled time in the program for attendees. You can also present live and we expect most will do so, but we want to try and accommodate as many presentation preferences as possible. Regardless of presenting live or pre-recording, there will be a live Q&A with the presenters.

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

TRLN has been part of Project ReShare since the beginning and recently a sandbox environment was setup allowing people to test the returnables functionality of the software. It’s an opportunity to experiment with the software in which many staff members across TRLN libraries have been involved in the development.

Information on how to access the sandbox environment and replicate peer to peer resource sharing can be found at https://projectreshare.org/products/product-demo/. A script or suggested steps on how to test is available as well.

If you would like context before using the sandbox environment, there is a demo video and roadmap information for ReShare Returnables at https://projectreshare.org/products/returnables/. 

Members of the Resource Sharing Working Group are coordinating testing and gathering local feedback in an effort to share this information with the larger working group.

If you have feedback to share or questions about ReShare and the sandbox environment, please contact kelly@trln.org.

The TRLN Discovery development team recently deployed a few different and exciting changes to the shared catalog and discovery layers. These changes are summarized below, but may not be deployed to each institution’s local discovery layer yet. The inclusion of these changes may vary depending on your institution. Our release notes include more information about these updates.

• Users can search for variants of a name in the LOC authority and will return all results associated with that name. This allows users to more easily find all records associated with a person, place, or organization included in the LCNAF. Alternate or variant names might include name changes, various romanizations, and pseudonyms. A URI must be associated with a record in order to search variants’ names.
• There is now a spellcheck function that will provide users with a set of suggestions based on the spelling of their query. If their query has no results based on the spelling provided, they will see a prompt asking “Did you mean” followed by a set of suggested queries they can select to see results. Search suggestions only display when there are 5 or fewer results.
  • The suggestions are based on actual words in the catalog index, not a dictionary, so the suggestions themselves may not be spelled correctly but should always produce search results.
  • Some misspelled queries will not produce search suggestions because there are matches in the catalog.
• When a user searches their local catalog, they will not receive suggestions for items owned by other institutions.