a digital infrastructure for the scholarly activities of texas universities

September 20, 2006 TCAL Presentation 1

A digital infrastructure for the scholarly activities of Texas universities


Overview of Talk

• Challenges• Partners• Goal• Location• Services• TDL Management• 5 Year Plan• TDL Membership Opportunities• Impacts• Discussion/Questions


Challenges

• Increasing demands on research and education infrastructure– THECB Regional Plan for Higher Education

• 500,000 new students, 7500 new faculty by 2015• Scarce resources

• Underutilized intellectual capital on campuses– If not used, actual value is zero

• Global movement to transform scholarly communication– Open access journals– Federated institutional repositories– New forms of communication - Blogs, WIKIs, etc…

• Cornyn-Lieberman bill


Addressing the Challenges

• A unified Texas Digital Library• Collaboration of higher education institutions in Texas• Sharing of resources• Shared services model


Partners

• Initially– 4 Texas ARL libraries: UT, A&M, TTU, and UH– 8 prospective libraries:

• University of North Texas• University of Texas at Dallas• University of Texas at Arlington• Texas State University• Baylor• MD Anderson• A&M Galveston• Angelo State University

• Currently– Preparing a “slow growth” plan

• Later– All of higher education in Texas


TDL Goal

Become a center of excellence in the curation and preservation of digital scholarly information of the state of Texas.


Location

• Initially– Central facility in Austin at UT

• Currently– Building redundancy by mirroring core TDL systems at TAMU

and TTU• Later

– Universities will have repositories of their own and choose to federate certain collections with TDL or just use TDL as their repository


Storage NetworkStorage Network

Technical ReportSeries

Electronic Theses

andDissertations

Repository Content

From the user’s perspective:

Learning Object

Repositories

Current faculty

research: preprints, postprints,

datasets

Access

Services

Faculty archives

www.tdl.org, Google, etc.

Scholarly Publishing (TDL Press), Collection Management, etc.Scholarly Publishing (TDL Press), Collection Management, etc.

Preservation

http://www.tdl.org/


LEARN

• Lonestar Education and Research Network

• 1 Gigabit Dedicated Link for TDL


Network and Computing Internet/Internet 2

Tigre/LearnStorage/Server Systems

MiddlewareShibboleth OAI-PMH

Storage Resource Broker (SRB) Preservation Software (eg LOCKSS)

Workflow Directory Services

EnablersDSpace Fedora ADORE SAKAI

Open Journal SystemEprints Dpubs

ServicesInstitutional Repositories

Learning Object Repositories Scholarly publishing

Collection management Preservation

TDL Architectural Layers

Contributed staff

Base budget


Website

• Went live February 1, 2006• TAMU, UT, and TTU ETDs in Manakin/DSpace• TAMU’s Journal of Digital Information [JoDI] in Open Journal System

[OJS]

http://tdl.org/


TDL Management

Executive Committee

Co-Directors John Leggett

Mark McFarland

Official Staff Working Groups

Administrative AssistantHillary Spiller

Systems AdministratorPhillip Mattingly

Systems ProgrammerJay Paz

Computing InfrastructureETDRepositoriesCataloging/Metadata Web OversightComing Soon: Collection

Management

UT Repositories Bridge Group


Participation in TDL Working Groups

• The success of the Texas Digital Library depends on the collaboration of working group members from participating institutions. Through this new model of work we will gain an unparalleled level of interoperability among ourselves and within the global scholarly community.

• Working groups serve many purposes: pooling of staff skills and resources, distribution of work, sharing of information and ideas, and most importantly, the advancement of TDL’s major projects.

• Working group members drawn from the participating TDL institutions are selected from volunteers or are appointed by the co-directors/chairs based on expertise and/or position.


Guidelines for Working Group Participation

• Responsibilities of Chairs– Working in concert with the co-directors, chair will contact and discuss

the working group charge and work requirements with prospective members.

– Submit monthly progress updates to the co-directors• Responsibilities of Members

– Will discuss working group invitation with supervisor– Attend meetings and actively participate in discussions and creation of

working group documents and processes• Responsibilities of co-directors

– Will notify prospective member’s supervisor of invitation to join the working group

– Make every attempt to be flexible in allowing staff from participating institutions to serve on working groups in support of TDL goals


TDL Bridge Groups

• Bridge Group Co-Chairs: Aaron Choate and Lexie Thompson-Young

• Sponsor: Mark McFarland• Purpose:

– The TDL Bridge Group will contribute to Aaron’s and Lexie’s work on the TDL Repositories Working Group (WG), supporting the developing infrastructure of UT Austin’s and TDL’s Repository.

• The Bridge Group will help develop a LOR implementation plan, define General TDL Repository Policies, and constructively comment on the FAR and Manakin Projects, all of which will help the WG meet their FY07 deliverables.

UT Repository Bridge Group


https://sharepoint.lib.utexas.edu/texasdigitallibrary


5 Year Plan

• Year 1: Start-Up• Year 2: Plan• Year 3: Demonstrate• Year 4: Deploy• Year 5: Assess


Year 1: Start-up 2005-2006 Establish presence, core technology, and a basic set of services

• Business case• Establish computing infrastructure

– Core infrastructure at UT, mirrored at TAMU• Website• Open Journal System• Journal of Digital Information [JoDI] conversion• Manakin/DSpace• Hiring

– Administrative Assistant– IT Manager– Systems Analyst


Year 1: Start-up, continued

• ETD Project– A&M, UT, TTU

• Presentations– 8 presentations in 2005 - 2006

• Computing Infrastructure implementation testing– Storage Resource Broker [SRB] – Vendor Specific Replication [SnapVault]

• Connections– Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB)– Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)– Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN)


Year 2: Plan2006-2007Plan infrastructure and develop policies for content submission and management

• Common Submission System for ETDs• Computing Infrastructure• Preservation Network• Access Control

– Shibboleth• Repositories

– Learning Object Repositories– Faculty Object Repositories


Year 3: Demonstrate2007-2008Demonstrate infrastructure and policies for content submission and management

Year 4: Deploy2008-2009Deploy infrastructure and policies for content submission throughout Texas

Year 5: Assess2009-2010Assess impact of TDL services on higher education in Texas


Next 12 months:

Major Projects:• Preservation Network• ETD Common Submission System• Shibboleth• Manakin/DSpace• Faculty Archives Repository• Learning Objects Repository

Open Repositories 2007 Conference


http://www.openrepositories.org

http://www.openrepositories.org/

http://www.openrepositories.org/


TDL Membership Opportunities

• Tier 2: Associate Members • Tier 3: Affiliate Members • Contributors


Membership Assumptions

• Participating ARLs each have a voting member on the Governing Board

• T2 representation on the governing board• T3’s and Contributors not represented on governing board• Contributed staff managed by co-Directors• Monetary contributions are central; staff contribution is local


Tier 2: Associate

• Inst. of Higher Ed in Texas• $50,000 annual commitment• 1 local FTE (40 hrs/wk) commitment

– Managed by TDL Directors– Participate in TDL Working Groups

• Representation on the governing board • Content contributor


Tier 3: Affiliate

• Inst. of Higher Ed in Texas• $25,000 annual commitment• Content contributor


Contributors

• Inst. of Higher Ed in Texas• Solicited content contributors


TDL Members and Prospective Members

• Tier 1: – University of Texas at Austin– Texas A&M University– Texas Tech University– University of Houston

• Tier 2 (prospective): – University of North Texas– University of Texas at Dallas– University of Texas at Arlington– Texas State University– Baylor University

• Tier 3 (prospective):– MD Anderson– Texas A&M at Galveston– Angelo State University


The TDL Budget

• Funds the TDL infrastructure - core technology, core team• Does not fund the actual work of putting up the Institutional

Repository, website, and ETDs • Tiers 1-3 must provide cash

– For personnel costs– For shared computing infrastructure


7 Major Impacts

1. Increases the institution’s visibility and impact

2. Increases accessibility to scholarship and research

3. Increases competitiveness for research funding

4. Maximizes the research capabilities of faculties by increasing the pace of scholarly dissemination and discovery

5. Increases stature as a leader in developing new working models for publication and dissemination of scholarly, research, and educational information

6. Advances core teaching and research missions by fostering innovation in education and research

7. Preserves intellectual assets for future generations of researchers, teachers, students, and scholars


Discussion/Questions

a digital infrastructure for the scholarly activities of texas universities

Documents

state of texas

dallasuniversity of

scholarly publishing

digital infrastructure

new faculty

global scholarly community

research network

higher education500