News

In response to COVID-19, we have made a few changes to upcoming TRLN events, which may be transitioned to a virtual format, postponed, or cancelled. In addition to limited operations on our campuses, The Frontier, a frequent meeting space for TRLN interest groups and working groups, is closed through March 27. 

As we continue to monitor COVID-19 and communicate with TRLN library staff, we will update event pages with the most current information. The events listed below have been updated.

Electronic Resources Management Working Group Meeting, March 20 rescheduled for March 27

Professional Development Meeting, March 23 

Kristin Antelman Sustainable Scholarship Discussion, March 26

Library Management Skills Institute I: The Manager, May 5-7

At this time, no changes have been made for the Annual Meeting on July 31.

 

TRLN campus updates in response to COVID-19:

• Duke University: https://coronavirus.duke.edu 
• Duke University Libraries: https://library.duke.edu/about/coronavirus 
• Duke Medical Center Library: https://mclibrary.duke.edu/covid-19
• NC Central: https://www.nccu.edu/coronavirus
• NC State: https://www.ncsu.edu/coronavirus/ 
• UNC-Chapel Hill: https://www.unc.edu/coronavirus/ 
• UNC-Chapel Hill University Libraries: https://library.unc.edu/covid-19-updates/ 
• UNC-Chapel Health Sciences Library: https://guides.lib.unc.edu/COVID19 

If you have any questions or concerns regarding TRLN programs or services, please email info@trln.org. 

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.

Since Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are full members of SPARC, the Executive Committee believes it is important to publicly support these principles and adopt them as targets across TRLN “to ensure that services are transparent, open, and support the aims of scholarship. These principles can be used by users/clients to make decisions about which services they will contract with, and by service providers to improve their practices and governance.”

“Endorsing these principles is further recognition that the Triangle provides a unique concentration of expertise in scholarly communication, digital humanities, open science, data curation, and open pedagogy. We are eager to expand our existing transformative partnerships, promoting the Triangle as a center of excellence in this sphere” said Greg Raschke, Senior Vice Provost and Director of Libraries at NC State and Chair of the TRLN Executive Committee.

Learn more about the SPARC Good Practice Principles for Scholarly Communication Services at https://sparcopen.org/our-work/good-practice-principles-for-scholarly-communication-services.