Tools Help Library Share its Wealth of Material

Air America pilots wore this uniform on commercial airline flights as well as on covert operations and rescues for the CIA during the Vietnam War.

Working with the Texas Digital Library (TDL) staff in Austin, Eugene McDermott Library at The University of Texas at Dallas has launched a digital forum on its Web site to preserve the university’s intellectual output.

Treasures @ UT Dallas debuted in December as a work in progress. It began with digital images already processed in the History of Aviation Collection located in the library’s Special Collections. Also listed are digital versions of library publications. The archive has the added capacity to offer digital documents, video and audio files.  Users can search by file name or by collection.

The TDL is an open-source project used by Texas Research Libraries as a forum for sharing research throughout Texas and with others around the world. Copyrighted materials can be included with permission of the copyright holder.

“It is our goal to enable our UTD community of faculty, staff and students to share their knowledge with one another online,” said Dean of Libraries Larry D. Sall, Ph.D. “We are interested in obtaining items from our schools to showcase on this special site for years to come.”

The library recently added a streaming podcast presented by the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences that addressed the current financial crisis. Another just added is a presentation by Emily A. Tobey, Ph.D. of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Another being prepared for the site is a presentation by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge sponsored by the School of Management.

The McDermott Library committee worked closely for nearly a year with the TDL staff, particularly the programmers, to build the infrastructure. The site was configured and customized for launch on Dec. 13.

McDermott Library programmers Faizur Rahman, Ph.D., and Daud Abdullah used their knowledge of DSpace, a cutting-edge technology originally developed by MIT and HP researchers. and Manakin to build the server with the oversight of Jean Vik, associate library director of operating systems. Ellen Safley, Ph.D., senior associate library director, and Mary Jo Venetis, Ph.D., associate library director of technical services, led the committee and served as liaison between the TDL staff and the McDermott staff.

McDermott library preserves and enables easy and open access to all types of digital content including text, images, moving images, sound files and data sets for any interested department within the UTD community.

Other committee members were Misu Kim, Ph.D., media and archives cataloger; Iryna Shevchuk, Web services librarian; Paul Oelkrug, C.A., coordinator of Special Collections; Thomas Allen, curator; and Patrizia Nava, library assistant in Special Collections.