News

To close out 2019, there were a number of meetings across TRLN so we thought it would be good to provide a brief roundup summary.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Interest Group

TRLN’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Interest Group met on December 13th to reestablish the group and discuss possible areas to collaborate as a consortium. The group plans to meet on a quarterly basis and staff from across TRLN libraries are welcome to attend. For more information reach out to the interest group’s chair, Ciara Healy (ciara.healy@duke.edu) or info@trln.org.

TRLN Discovery

A newly formed team co-chaired by Jacob Shelby, NC State’s Interim Lead Librarian for Metadata Technologies, and Kelly Farrell, TRLN’s Program Officer, held its first meeting on December 13th and plans to meet monthly. The TRLN Discovery metadata team will be a forum for discussing metadata-related discovery topics for the catalog that the team would want to build shared policy or infrastructure around. The team will investigate use cases, issues, and approaches, interface with stakeholders, and ultimately propose recommendations for the TRLN Discovery development team.

On December 16th, the product owners and development team held its quarterly in-person meeting to discuss longer term priorities for the shared index. Also in attendance was Tim McGeary, Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and Technology, Jill Sexton, NC State’s Associate Director for the Digital Library, and Tim Shearer, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and IT.

Provosts’ Forum on Scholarly Communication Steering Committee

The steering committee held its kick-off meeting on December 16th to discuss the initial charge for the committee and begin developing a forum proposal. The committee will continue refining the scope of the forum and present the proposal to the TRLN Executive Committee.

 

TRLN has been busy exploring diversity, equity, and inclusion events, programs, resources, training, and more activities we could do as a consortium. One example of upcoming programming is the screening and panel for Change the Subject – registration open now!

To track all the ideas we receive, we’ve created a Trello board that anyone can access. On this board you will find a card for each idea and by selecting a card, you can get more information. Many ideas have been shifted into quarters throughout 2020 and we will keep updating this board as new ideas are shared and planned for the coming years.

TRLN staff are reaching out to all TRLN groups over this quarter and next to garner more ideas and feedback for DEI work we can undertake together. The Change the Subject screening is one result of this outreach.

We want to structural build DEI into all the work TRLN does. This will take time and lots of work, but we think documenting our current and future activities is a step in making positive change. If you have any ideas or feedback to share about what TRLN can do to weave DEI throughout our work, please don’t hesitate to reach out to info@trln.org!

Lisa Croucher, TRLN Executive Director, traveled to Charleston, SC, November 4 to November 6, to participate in various meetings associated with the Charleston Conference. The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) meeting included a presentation by James Wiser, Library Consortium Director, Community College League of California, on the accessibility lawsuit ongoing in the Los Angeles Community College System. A federal court recently ruled in favor of the National Federation of the Blind due in part to accessibility issues with the library. Mention of the case and ruling were repeated in a few subsequent meetings and conversations serving as a wake-up call about the importance of ensuring accessibility of library resources. There was general belief that this was the first of many such suits coming down the pike and that all of our institutions should be vigilant and prepared.

GOBI hosted its annual gathering of libraries, consortia, and publishers to focus on the future of print books in academic libraries. The session on Textbook Affordability, Open Access, and the Institutional Mission included a presentation by Dean Smith, director of Duke University Press. DeGruyter hosted a meeting led by Michael Zeoli, formerly of EBSCO and now with DeGruyter, that focused on similar topics, using two publications as fodder for conversation: Cost of Publishing Monographs (2016: https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/the-costs-of-publishing-monographs/) and Library Acquisition Patterns (2019: https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/2019-report-library-acquisition-patterns/). The meeting included an exercise to help participants view the publishing ecosystem from each other’s perspective.

The Executive Committee of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) has endorsed the SPARC Good Practice Principles for Scholarly Communication Services. At its October quarterly meeting, committee members discussed scholarly communication actions with potential for consortial collaboration. Endorsement of the SPARC principles is part of larger work to build upon and bolster scholarly communication services undertaken across TRLN member institutions.

For more information, please read our press release.

TRLN will host Blacklight Summit at Duke University Libraries Wednesday, October 9 through Friday, October 11.

Blacklight Summit will include demonstrations of Blacklight applications, sessions about enhancing Blacklight applications, and ample time for community engagement, code exchange, and development.

Registration is open until seats are full (40 attendees). Please visit this web page for more information about the agenda, registration, accommodation, and travel.