News

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.

Whether expecting it or surprised to experience it, users encounter metadata in library systems that offend, exclude, and dehumanize people. The complexities of how metadata displays alongside a particular resource is not easily conveyed as users conduct their research without disrupting their experience. Rectifying the use of these metadata, such as outdated Library of Congress subject headings in library systems, takes time and resources libraries may not have, but with modern practices and more flexible technology comes new opportunities for libraries to create a more inclusive search experience.

Technical Solution

The TRLN Discovery development team created an elegant solution to overlay or remap subject headings identified as problematic by users with preferred terms. They created a simple configuration file to capture the problematic term and the preferred term being mapped to it. When a new term is added to this file, each institution re-processes their records using the subject heading to make the change visible to end users. Some examples of terms currently overlaid include “Illegal aliens” (overlaid with “Undocumented immigrants”), “Slaves” (overlaid with “Enslaved persons”), and “Dirty War, 1976-1983” (overlaid with “Terrorismo de Estado, Argentina, 1976-1983”).
Access the full list of overlaid terms.

Remapping a subject heading does not change the MARC record data or search results. It instead changes subject data that displays to the end user. Additionally, remapped headings must be specified at the whole subdivision level. This requires some repetition in the configuration file, but this also accommodates nuance in the remappings. If a user searches for “illegal aliens”, they will return results using this term; however the subject facet and the item record’s subject will display “Undocumented immigrants”. The remapping only applies to subject headings. If “Illegal aliens” displays elsewhere, such as title, then this information will not be overlaid with “Undocumented immigrants”. The change is subtle for end users in the Blacklight discovery layer, but we think this makes a significant impact in creating a more inclusive and representative search experience for users.

About the Process

The technical mechanism to overlay problematic subject headings is somewhat simple. The process to review and decide whether a term is within scope of the program is more complicated.

Users can submit suggested terms to overlay using this form. The TRLN Discovery Metadata Team reviews, researches, and documents decisions made for each suggested term. Some terms have been extensively discussed in broader communities and we can point to this work when making our recommendations. Some suggestions may require collaboration with the TRLN Metadata Interest Group, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders to determine whether a term should be remapped as part of this program and what is the preferred term. Ultimately, the TRLN Discovery product owners review the recommended terms to remap and if they approve, the terms are added to the configuration file and visible to end users. We believe this multi-step decision and approval process opens up additional feedback channels to multiple stakeholders and attempts to make this process more transparent, while the team continues to iterate.

Suggest a Subject Heading

Have a problematic subject heading to suggest for remapping? Use this form and the TRLN Discovery Metadata Team will review and follow up with your suggestion. For questions about this program, contact metadata@trln.org. 

Important Links

• Suggestion form for Problematic Subject Headings
• List of terms currently overlaid
• Information about this program on TRLN.org

Later this fall, TRLN will be offering Library Carpentry workshops to approximately 25 people who work in TRLN member libraries. This opportunity is being funded by the Network of the National Library of Medicine, Southeastern/Atlantic Regional Office (NNLM/SEA), which invited applications in July from libraries and consortia interested in hosting a workshop. Nandita Mani, UNC-Chapel Hill Associate University Librarian for Health Sciences and Director of the Health Sciences Library, and Megan von Isenburg, Associate Dean for Library Services & Archives at the Duke School of Medicine, suggested that TRLN apply.

The workshops, which will be offered via Zoom, include Introduction to Working with Data, the Unix Shell, OpenRefine, and Introduction to Git. The workshop series will last four days (one day per topic) and will be led by experienced Library Carpentry instructors and supported by 2-3 helpers, staff of TRLN libraries who are familiar with the content.

The TRLN Advisory Council is helping to identify participants and helpers. The exact dates of the workshop are being determined in collaboration with Library Carpentry.