Texas Libraries Research Articles

I’d Do Anything for Love: Engaging Local Music Communities to Preserve Texas Music

ABSTRACT The Local/Independent Music Initiative of Texas (LIMIT), an ongoing project to collect, preserve, and disseminate music from Texas, meeting a need in the Denton music community. The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries possess the necessary skills and resources to preserve local music history, including pertinent recordings and archival materials. This study discusses innovative ways of connecting with potential donors through outreach and programming, initially supported by a grant-funded project. The project team actively participated in the local music community, organizing events and attending others, seeking out music for the collection, making connections with potential donors, and championing LIMIT.

Expanding equipment lending: Addressing accessibility and curriculum gaps

Academic libraries are expanding their collections to meet the technological and leisure needs of their students, but support for accessibility and curriculum can often be overlooked. At the University of North Texas Libraries, the Access Services Department utilized an internal grant to address the accessibility and curriculum gaps in its collection by offering access to equipment such as C-Pen readers, electronic translators, and sensory items. This article describes the steps taken to create a new circulating collection of equipment items. Best practices for cataloging, circulation, item storage, and procedures, as well as strategies for promoting the collection are also discussed.

Quantitative analysis of digital disparity using broadband internet data

Digital disparities have been a concern among different communities across the U.S. The lack of an integrated approach to evaluate digital connectivity limits our understanding of where and what the differences are to address digital equity. This research utilized broadband internet open data and other government datasets to evaluate the status of digital connectivity across the U.S. where K-12 schools and public libraries are located. This work is funded by the University of North Texas Libraries’ Dean’s Innovation Grant (DIG) 2021–2022 award. The research data and products are open for others to use and replicate.

Does Time Matter When Greeting Patrons? Observations from a Two-Year Study in Texas Public Libraries

This article presents a 2-year study on how quickly Texas library staff members greeted a library patron after eye contact. Results from 140 library visits found a mean of nearly 4 min, but a mean of 9 s after removing outliers. The study also calculated the perceived customer value by measuring the service, quality, image, and price of the customer service experience. Findings suggest that each patron/staff interaction may alter a patron’s perceived Return on Investment (ROI). Given libraries are primarily supported by tax dollars, poor patron service experiences may impact the perceived values of library programs and services, jeopardizing future funding. The article highlights the importance for libraries to retain satisfied employees and build trust within their communities.

Buildings of Texas

This note describes an ongoing project at the University of Texas Libraries (UTL) that is transforming the way we think about place, people, and events in managing archival collections. This project was developed around a dataset donated by architectural historians, Gerald Moorhead and Mario Sánchez to the Alexander Architectural Archives. This dataset was collected by a team of researchers studying architecturally significant buildings for the two-volume publication, Buildings of Texas. Our team at UT Libraries has used it as a test-bed for geolocating built works in Texas and mapping our Architectural collections. This dataset presented a clear opportunity to develop map-based digital exhibitions and finding aids for archival material, but also posed several challenges due to naming ambiguities, vague building location descriptions, and repeated references to people and architectural firms that were difficult to disambiguate and interconnect. In an attempt to overcome these challenges and develop a set of methods for dealing with similar and related collections, our cross-disciplinary team is evaluating ways to develop a flat spreadsheet into a collection of inter-related datasets. Our goal was a system that could be managed more flexibly, be easily represented through spatial and non-spatial visualizations, and—crucially—contain references to concepts and typologies defined in widely-used ontologies. We have also sought ways to contribute our data as a local authority to both the Getty vocabularies and Wikidata, as a means to broaden representation and allow for multivocality and multiplicity. We have found unique advantages to a team-approach to the cleaning and data normalization process that transformed a single spreadsheet into a graph database. Our experimentation in this process has facilitated our own visualization of the connections between places, people, and events and, in turn, has informed the way we will present this material in our online exhibitions. In addition to the graph database, we explored traditional relational database technologies, which turned out to be much easier to use for mapping the data and managing it with GIS software. Throughout the project, we have been mindful of breaking down traditional modes of archival description, of contributing to but also looking beyond perceived authorities, and about the value of the work we do for architectural artifacts and landscapes, but also any cultural heritage community of practice seeking to meaningfully describe artifacts, events, people, and places over time.

Land, Race, and the Long Road to the Córdova Rebellion in East Texas, 1826–1839

Land, Race, and the Long Road to the Córdova Rebellion in East Texas, 1826–1839 Daniel Glenn (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Map of Texas, 1835. From A Comprehensive Atlas: Geographical, Historical and Commercial (Boston: J. H. Wilkins & R.B. Carter, 1835) by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford. Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin. [End Page 160] In August 1838, eighteen men in the Nacogdoches region, including Vicente Córdova, a former alcalde of the town, issued a brief statement declaring themselves rebels against the Republic of Texas. Asserting that they were "tired of the injustice and the usurpation of their rights," these Mexican loyalists pledged to "shed the last drop of their blood" to resist the current laws, which jeopardized their "lives and property."1 The declaration came nearly a week after a skirmish over stolen horses, in which one Anglo Texan was killed, revealed the presence of a party of more than one hundred irregulars and Mexican soldiers in the area.2 When Anglos quickly mustered a militia of several hundred, the rebels retreated northwest into territory occupied by several Indian groups, including Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, and Kickapoo. Although rumors claimed that hundreds of Indians had joined the renegades, the chiefs professed peaceful intentions. Unable to secure a commitment of support from the Indians and with the Anglo Texan militia closing in, the rebels withdrew onto the prairie and raided outlying Anglo settlements.3 [End Page 161] The Córdova Rebellion, which is what this event came to be known as, was a poorly conceived and even more poorly executed effort to destabilize the Republic of Texas. While Vicente Córdova declared that the "Cherokee and other tribes" had promised "to unite as soon as possible for action," Mexican military leaders in Matamoros promised to "make a forced march" with reinforcements the moment the "operations are made known in Matamoros."4 Neither promise was fulfilled. Córdova had grossly overstated both the Indians' loyalty to Mexico and his ability to persuade them to risk their lives and homes in support of his adventure. Likewise, the Mexican commander spared only thirty-four soldiers to support Córdova's effort and did not launch a supporting invasion of Texas from the south.5 Each misled the other, which ensured the rebellion had no chance at success. Although the presence of the insurgents and their attacks on isolated Anglo settlements may have inspired increased hostility by neighboring Indians, the Republic of Texas did not face what it feared most, a coordinated campaign by the Mexican army, Tejano loyalists, and their Indian allies. Despite its failure, however, the Córdova Rebellion had a lasting influence on the development of Texas. The incident confirmed Anglo Texans' worst fears about the Tejanos and Indians living amongst them: that they hated the Anglos and, whatever they might say to the contrary, were waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Tejanos in the Nacogdoches region, under increasing scrutiny from their Anglo neighbors, sold their lands and headrights and moved away. The Republic of Texas instituted a removal policy for Indians in the aftermath of the uprising that it pursued through military force, which led directly to the removal of the Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, and Caddo Indians. It is worth asking why an abortive revolt would have such far-reaching consequences. The answers lay in the mindset of Anglo Texans and their expectations for their new country. In general, Anglo Texans harbored a profound distrust for American Indians and Tejanos and were discomfited by their presence in the republic. For most Anglos, Tejanos and Indians represented at best barriers to their goal of converting Texas into what they would call a civilized country, and at worst dormant enemies who would strike the moment the Anglos let down their guard. The notion that these groups might conceivably be or one day become members of the republic—that is, full and equal citizens—was beyond the imagination of even the most progressive Anglos.6 [End Page 162] This is certainly not the first essay to examine racial conflict in Texas, nor is it the first to investigate...

Refining the process: An institutional approach to preparing projects for digitisation

Over several years of managing digital projects, librarians at the University of North Texas Libraries have refined their knowledge management and digitisation operations to realise gains in efficiency and error reduction, and to provide a more fluid imaging workflow for staff and student workers. This paper describes the opportunities identified in pre-processing projects and front-loading decision-making for physical collections.

Herman Ehrenberg's Memory: A Research Note

Herman Ehrenberg's Memory:A Research Note James E. Crisp (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Several stanzas of "New Yankee Doodle" shown in Alex Dienst, "Contemporary Poetry of the Texan Revolution," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 21 (October 1917): 158. University of North Texas Libraries, the Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu. [End Page 460] The longest passage written in English in Herman Ehrenberg's 1843 German-language memoir of the Texas Revolution is a song that he claims to have heard sung in the spring of 1836 by a fellow escapee from the Mexican army named John Hitchcock. The scene takes place in the abandoned home of a Texan settler by the name of Thomas Kelly, located near the right bank of the Colorado River, a few miles above the quaint port city of Matagorda. None of these details is likely to be exactly true, as Ehrenberg appears to have invented the heroic details of his second capture by the Mexican army after his escape from the murder of the Texan prisoners at Goliad. Moreover, the names of neither the alleged singer nor the alleged settler quite match the historical record.1 Nevertheless, there appears to be far more than a germ of truth behind Herman's tale of the former prisoners' reunion in a house left empty by the "Runaway Scrape," and their surprise meeting with the soldier/settler, just returned to his home from Sam Houston's army. The facts behind these and other stories are documented in the latest effort to bring Ehrenberg's long-misunderstood volume to the public: Inside the Texas Revolution: The Enigmatic Memoir of Herman Ehrenberg, which was published in 2021. Interestingly, there is in the lyrics of the song that he gave to his readers in Europe evidence of the accuracy of Herman's memories of his exciting experiences in what he called the "prairie republic" of Texas. [End Page 461] These are the song's lyrics, as written by Ehrenberg: In Mexico none shall be freeThe people is too blind to seeThey can not cheer the libertyO Yankee doddle dandy. A recent review of Texas Revolution material by the present author (and editor of Inside the Texas Revolution) in the pages of the last 124 years of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly disclosed the source of Ehrenberg's lyrics. The first stanza of a poem titled "New Yankee Doodle," published in the Telegraph and Texas Register on October 31, 1835, reads as follows: St. Ana did a notion take that he must rule the land, sir;The church and he forthwith agree to publish the command, sir.In Mexico none shall be freeThe people are too blind to seeThey cannot share the LibertyOf Yankee Doodle Dandy.2 The source of Ehrenberg's lyrics is thus obvious—and the phonetically similar sounds of "cheer" and "share" in the next-to-last line of both song and poem (as well as the slight variations in spelling) make it clear that Herman was using his memory rather than a written source as his muse. Throughout his memoir, Ehrenberg was constantly recalling the vocabulary and the cadences of speech of the Americans and Anglo Texans with whom he served—with the New Orleans Grays at the Siege of Béxar, and in the doomed command of James W. Fannin at Coleto and Goliad. If we needed one more bit of evidence as to the lasting impressions made on the mind and memory of Herman Ehrenberg by his service in the Texas Revolution, these snippets of verse and song should suffice. [End Page 462] James E. Crisp James E. Crisp, Professor Emeritus of History at North Carolina State University, has been researching and writing about the era of the Texas Revolution for more than fifty years. He is a Fellow of the TSHA and his most recent book, Inside the Texas Revolution: The Enigmatic Memoir of Herman Ehrenberg (TSHA, 2021), which he edited and was translated by Louis E. Brister and James C. Kearney, won the Summerfield G. Roberts Award from the Sons of the Republic of Texas. Footnotes 1. For the full...

Borderlands History in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Borderlands History in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly Omar Valerio-Jiménez (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution First page of the July 1912 issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, which subtly notes the publication's name change. University of North Texas Libraries, the Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu. [End Page 408] For over a century, the Southwestern Historical Quarterly (including the time between 1897 and 1912 when it was known as the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association) has been a venue for borderlands scholarship on Texas and the surrounding regions. While the number of articles on borderlands topics have waxed and waned over the years, the journal has consistently promoted scholarship on the Spanish and Mexican periods of the region's history. The Quarterly has featured articles by some of the most renowned borderlands scholars, such as Herbert Bolton, who helped establish the field, but it has also been an avenue for emerging scholars whose research has appeared as journal articles before their books were published. The journal has also published articles by various non-academics whose interests in the state's early history led to contributions to the borderlands field.1 Among the first articles in what [End Page 409] would become known as borderlands history that appeared in the Quarterly were studies focused on Indigenous nations, imperial rivalries, and Spanish exploration.2 The first articles on Indigenous nations were mainly descriptive. They focused on identifying which Native groups lived in what is now Texas, their social organization, the languages spoken by each nation, and their displacement by Anglo Americans. Reflecting the attitudes of Anglo Americans in the late 1890s, these articles demonstrate a Eurocentric bias and advance pernicious stereotypes of Indigenous nations. While discussing the presence of Caddo, Alabama-Coushatta, Lipan Apaches, Comanches, Tonkawas, Karankawas, and others in the region that became Texas, Martin McHenry Kenney lauded the advances in comparative philology that allowed scholars to trace human migrations by analyzing language. Using "tribes" to refer to the Indigenous nations, Kenney discussed the "advance toward civilization" of "savage people."3 He also described alliances among various Indigenous nations and briefly explained their internal social structure of matriarchal and patriarchal groups. Kenney's perspective on "progress" and "civilization" led him to conclude, "There is no instance of a tribe, as such, adopting the political or social organization of civilization."4 But perhaps his most troubling statement is about the Karankawa Indians of the Texas Gulf Coast, when he writes, "The first and worst of these was the Carankawa, inhabiting along the coast from Galveston westward–a tribe of cannibals, noted for their gigantic stature and hideous aspect. … their language was an almost inarticulate guttural, impossible of imitation, and the lowest form of human speech."5 Some articles on Indigenous nations contain important insights despite their Eurocentric interpretations. The essay by Kenney mentioned above notes the advanced skills required to create arrowheads with "uniform construction." The author gestures to the elaborate trade networks among Indigenous nations that led Native groups in western and northwestern Texas to acquire flint rock to make arrowheads. Noting that this flint rock originated in Arkansas and Alabama, the author notes that expansive trade among non-sedentary Indigenous people brought this rock [End Page 410] material to Texas.6 The different types of materials exchanged in such trade networks are not discussed, nor is the possibility that these materials were exchanged among various Indigenous nations from their source to their ultimate destination. This article also speculates about the purpose of earthen mounds in East Texas and references Spanish colonists' accounts of them. Notwithstanding the author's acknowledgement that these mounds took considerable skill and time to complete, the author disparages Indigenous nations by arguing that it was unlikely they were descendants of the mound builders because these nations had a "habitual indisposition to labor."7 The author concludes that "prehistoric races" of Indigenous peoples became "extinct" because they had failed to develop agriculture. Other articles focused on the forced removal of the Cherokee Indians from the American Southeast to Texas and eventually to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. These essays described the Cherokees' acculturation...

Reflections on the Past: The Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the Civil War Era

Reflections on the Past:The Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the Civil War Era Robert Wooster (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution The first page of Guy M. Bryan's "Address to the People of the State of Texas," published in the January 1954 issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. University of North Texas Libraries, the Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu. [End Page 464] From its inception, the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) and its quarterly publication, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly (titled The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association from 1897 to 1912), have had close links with the American Civil War. The Association's first president, O. M. Roberts, had presided over the Texas secession convention, and among the first vice presidents was Guy M. Bryan, a planter and politician who had served during the war as de facto chief of staff to General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. The first Executive Council also included Francis R. Lubbock, the state's wartime governor until 1863. Other former Confederates closely involved in the Association's formation were John S. (Rip) Ford, the renowned Texas Ranger who led Confederate forces in the last battle of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch, Texas; John H. Reagan, postmaster general of the Confederacy; and Battle of San Jacinto veteran William P. Zuber, who fought with the Twenty-first Texas Cavalry Regiment from 1862 to 1864.1 This historical connection was quickly evidenced in accord with the TSHA constitution, which identified its goals as including "the discovery, collection, preservation, and publication of historical material, especially such as relates to Texas." The Quarterly would soon publish biographical [End Page 465] sketches of Bryan, Reagan, and John Marshall, commander of the Fourth Texas Infantry Regiment killed in the fighting at Gaines' Mill, Virginia (June 27, 1862). More significant were the direct contributions on Civil War-era subjects by these early leaders. Lubbock penned a short biography of Confederate general Hamilton P. Bee, a long-time Texan who had served in South Texas during his administration. In a similar vein, the Quarterly's second issue featured Ford's description of a July 1865 skirmish with Kickapoo Indians along the Frio River. Reagan also recalled his conversation on the eve of secession with then-Governor Sam Houston, and Roberts described his unsuccessful efforts as an ex-Confederate to take a seat in the postwar United States Senate.2 Publication of primary source materials became a vital element of the Quarterly's early contribution to scholarship on the Civil War era. Especially notable was Guy Bryan's correspondence with his old Kenyon College friend, Rutherford B. Hayes, published in twenty issues of the Quarterly between 1921 and 1926. These letters, mostly written after 1865 by a Confederate Democrat and a Federal Republican, offer extraordinary insights into the nation's efforts to reform itself in the wake of its bloodiest conflict. Bryan's formal call for secession, written following Abraham Lincoln's election as president, would also be published three decades later.3 During these early years, primary materials related to the Civil War usually featured the letters and reminiscences of soldiers who either fought against the Union or joined frontier companies to protect the interests of non-Indians in the state's western borderlands. They often described their Civil War experiences in the context of their broader lives in Texas. Especially illustrative were the letters of William P. Rogers, a Mexican War veteran and ardent secessionist who commanded the Second Texas Infantry Regiment. Writing to his wife, Rogers admitted that "we lost many of our best and noblest" in the bloody defeat at Shiloh, Tennessee (April 6–7, 1862), and revealed a misconception shared by many Southerners: "Two to one we can whip them but if we contend with greater odds the result will be doubtful." The Quarterly also secured J. K. P. Blackburn's lengthy [End Page 466] reminiscences of his service with one of the state's most famous Confederate units in the war's Western Theater, Terry's Texas Rangers (officially the Eighth Texas Cavalry Regiment).4 Early secondary works appearing in...

The Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the State of Civil Rights History in Texas

The Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the State of Civil Rights History in Texas Brian D. Behnken (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution The first page of Darlene Clark Hine's "The Elusive Ballot: The Black Struggle against the Texas Democratic White Primary, 1932–1945," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 81 (April 1978): 392. University of North Texas Libraries, the Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu. [End Page 482] The Southwestern Historical Quarterly (SHQ) began publishing articles that explored the history of civil rights activism in Texas beginning in the late 1970s. Many of these early studies focused on the activism and agency of Black Texans, while later studies examined the history of other ethno-racial communities, especially Mexican Americans. The activism of these groups predated the period of the civil rights struggle, of course. This begs the question: why did it take until the 1970s for the first major studies to appear? My guess is that ethnic history as we know it today was not a readily accepted part of Texas history until that time. In my own research journey, I was often dissuaded from examining African American and Mexican American civil rights history because "nothing happened here." That was in the 1990s and early 2000s, so I would surmise that if scholars said such things to me, which I somewhat wisely ignored, they surely said them to researchers in earlier periods, which may have discouraged some researchers. To me, the publication history of the SHQ makes those historians who analyzed the history of African American and Mexican American people that much more important. These scholars were pioneers. They shed light for the first time on individuals and groups that heretofore had received [End Page 483] little attention in the pages of the SHQ. And much of this scholarship has stood the test of time. In reviewing the articles published in the SHQ on Black Texans and Mexican-origin people I found myself swamped by feelings of nostalgia. Rereading the important works of Darlene Clark Hine, Michael Gillette, Merline Pitre, Arnoldo De León, and Emilio Zamora, among others, was in so many ways like visiting old friends. In the pages that follow, I demarcate the trajectory of the scholarship on Black and Mexican American people in the state. I began my perusal of old issues of the SHQ going back to the late nineteenth century. My goal was to engage in an exhaustive search, but of course there may be omissions. In particular, this essay focuses on the scholarship on African Americans and Mexican Americans, especially as it relates to civil rights activism. Since much of this scholarship has not been comparative, I first examine the publications in Black history followed by those focusing on Mexican-origin people. I begin with a titan: Darlene Clark Hine. In the April 1978 edition of the SHQ, Hine authored "The Elusive Ballot," an article on the Black struggle against the all-White Democratic primary. Black Texans mounted a concerted and smart legal campaign against the all-White primary. Beyond the primary though, Hine detailed the multiple methods White Texans used to disenfranchise African Americans. Thus, the battle against the primary was actually much larger than the primary itself. What she showed was that Black agency and activism long predated the period of the civil rights movement. "Against seemingly insurmountable obstinance and repeated failures," Hine writes, "blacks persisted in the white supremacy struggle because somehow, the conviction that justice was ultimately color-blind could not be destroyed."1 In the same edition of the SHQ readers were also treated to Michael Gillette's excellent essay "The Rise of the NAACP in Texas." The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had a unique history in Texas in that local branches operated as vibrant, locally oriented civil rights groups, even though the NAACP was a national organization headquartered in New York City. Gillette shows how Black Texans made the association work for them and their needs in Texas. Moreover, he credits Black activists such as Antonio Maceo Smith, Lulu B. White, Carter Wesley, Ernest C. Estell, and a host of other leaders with providing the leadership and...

The digitisation and commercial licensing of local television news as a model for preservation and access: A case study

Since 2014, the Special Collections Department of the University of North Texas Libraries (UNTL) has worked to digitise over 60 years’ worth of historical film and video and provide online digital access to news programming that was originally broadcast under the name WBAP-TV, and later NBC 5/KXAS-TV. Revenue from commercial licensing is expected to contribute an increasingly significant percentage of the funding needed to make the collection fully digitally accessible. This paper looks briefly at the history of the NBC5 news collection and examines the workflows required to prepare film and video for digitisation, perform quality control on digital files, and apply metadata keywords and content description to make footage easier for easily filmmakers to discover online. The paper will also discuss the licensing workflows in place at UNTL and how footage has been licensed for use in a variety of projects.

Reconsidering overdue fines in the midst of a pandemic

Fines place a negative light on libraries and create a barrier to access that is most damaging to low-income groups. Recognizing the harm, public libraries have implemented programs and new policies to reduce or eliminate fines, which have consistently been met with positive comments and an influx of item returns. Many academic libraries have followed, resulting in different impacts on return rates and overdue items. The coronavirus pandemic has taken a financial toll on college students and sped up the process of going fines free at the University of North Texas Libraries. While there are plenty of arguments both for and against fines to be discussed, forgiving fines certainly puts libraries in a favorable position.

Getting on the Same Page: Aligning ERM and LibGuides Content

ABSTRACT For many years, the University of North Texas Libraries’ Electronic Resource Management (ERM) module and LibGuides pages were administered separately with no shared oversight. Over time, the number of subject terms and keywords assigned in both systems grew and diverged significantly, leading to confusion on acceptable search terms and a wide variation in subject specificity. Recently, a committee was formed to review and revise the LibGuides’ subjects and establish new processes for creating and maintaining them. This work led to a revamping of the parallel work done for the ERM to not only align with the LibGuides process, but to feed into the LibGuides A-Z database list.

U.S. state libraries as strong institutions: Supporting justice for LGBTQ+ patrons?

AbstractOne hundred and ninety‐three countries have ratified the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development outlining 17 goals to promote prosperity of people and the planet in a peaceful and sustainable way. Despite hate crimes and marginalization around the world, LGBTQ+ communities are missing from conceptualization and description of these goals. This poster recognizes state libraries in the United States as potentially strong institutions to promote peace and justice for sexual minorities (i.e., Sustainable Development Goal 16). It presents illustrative examples from a website content analysis of four state libraries in Colorado, Maine, Oklahoma, and Texas, regions that the Human Rights Campaign has recognized as exemplar in six law and policy development areas (i.e., parenting, relationship recognition/religious refusal, hate crimes and criminal justice, youth, and health and safety). The findings—selectively described in the narrative and fully viewable through a weblink—serve as a first step towards identifying best practices that state libraries can take to better serve LGBTQ+ patrons.

More Than a Story: Engaging Young Learners Virtually

The content of this article was originally developed as a presentation for the Texas Library Association Annual Conference in March 2020. We intended to share about the importance of intentional early literacy-based programs, staff training, and using programming templates to create sustainable programming outlines. In light of current events, we have adapted our content to include strategies for shifting to a virtual programming environment while continuing to support early literacy and caregiver engagement.

A Collaborative Approach to Newspaper Preservation

This column explores a collaborative undertaking between the Denton Public Library in Denton, Texas, and the University of North Texas Libraries (UNT) to build digital access to the city of Denton’s newspaper of record, the Denton Record-Chronicle (DRC). The process included coordination with the newspaper publisher, solidifying agreements between the libraries, obtaining grant funding for the project, and ensuring scheduled uploads to build digital access to the DRC via The Portal to Texas History’s Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP). TDNP builds open access to Texas newspapers, and the partnership between the Denton Public Library and UNT exemplifies the value of collaboration to preserving history and building digital access to research materials

Opening up to OER: Creating Open Education Awareness on a large campus

ike many academic libraries, the University of Texas Libraries (UT) at UT-Austin is looking for ways to increase awareness of open educational resources (OER) on our campus. Our university does not have an OER mandate from our central campus administration, so the path towards greater awareness hasn’t been straightforward. We hope that sharing our nascent attempts to start this conversation on our campus, which have included starting a working group, offering faculty workshops, and fundraising for an OER librarian position, will help others begin to champion OER on their campuses.

Enhancing the Discovery of Tabletop Games

Collections of three-dimensional materials may not be discoverable to library users if they lack adequate metadata. Discovery of these collections may be enhanced through the application of relevant cataloging standards and controlled vocabularies. This paper outlines how librarians at the University of North Texas Libraries used these strategies to increase access to a large collection of tabletop games.

Collection and Digitization of Artifacts in the University of North Texas LGBTQ Archive

The University of North Texas Libraries has collected a large archive to document the history of the LGBTQ community in north Texas, including many significant artifacts. Artifacts in LGBTQ Archives can carry special significance as objects of memorialization, identity and protest. As digitization of archival collections continues, Special Collections staff has developed workflows for creating digital surrogates of these artifacts.