Attending the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (TCDL) may seem an odd choice for an archivist located in New York, but the values and work of the RAC and the conference host organization, the Texas Digital Library (TDL) are strongly aligned in areas of community building, open infrastructure, and broad access.
When I was the Digital Librarian and Diversity Resident at TDL, I was heavily involved in organizing and presenting at their annual conference held in Austin, TX. This year, I was able to enjoy the sessions and catch up with former colleagues on the work they’ve been doing regarding workflow management, collaborative digital archiving, and remedying harmful content and descriptions in digital collections. And with this year’s conference celebrating 20 years of advocating for all things open at TDL, it felt even more special to be there.
The keynote given by Dr. Kathrine Skinner, Director of Programs at Invest in Open Infrastructure, addressed the current struggles faced in acquiring funding for open source infrastructure. She called out the false reality of limited funding created by a system of competition in which innovation is valued over maintenance. Dr. Skinner, who co-founded and led Educopia during their earliest era of supporting BitCurator and MetaArchive, called for the community of open source supporters and users to rethink attitudes of failure around service sunsetting. When communities recognize that a service is no longer serving its needs, it can sunset gracefully and intentionally, as MetaArchive did earlier this year. Negative sunsetting experiences have occurred when the process was something that happened to the community rather than something the community participated in. Engaging in the sunsetting process allows users to feel empowered rather than disheartened and provides inspiration and guidance for future services.
While the conference is geared toward academic libraries in Texas, the collaboration and influence of TCDL extends past borders and categorizations. This year included a session from the Museum of Fine Arts Houston about a collection contributed by a living artist that was disparately housed across siloed systems, and how they unified the collection to be better discoverable to patrons. A presenter from the University of Miami discussed the experience her and her colleagues had in working with a private archive based in Venezuela. Aside from the challenges of digitizing, preserving, and describing items located in another country, Miami librarians also navigated language barriers, political hurdles in making the papers of former journalist and critic Sofia Ímber accessible and shipping some fragile materials for rehousing at the university.
Many of the sessions focused on soft skills such as workflow management and product ownership. An underlying theme in those sessions was the importance of communication and the fact that people, not technology, are the core of these activities. The first-day workshop I attended, “Working Smarter, Not Harder: Process Management for Digital Libraries and Archives,” was particularly relevant for the work being done here at the RAC. In particular, our inter-departmental Digital Processing Collaborative is tackling the task of developing processes for the lifecycle of born-digital deposits that are in line with good stewardship practices, interoperable with our systems and workflows, and not laboriously burdensome for our archivists. What I particularly enjoyed about this workshop was the emphasis on auditing your process to dig into where the blockages are instead of applying a technical solution that may not actually fix the issues. The workshop encouraged participants to think not just about their workflows but the people involved and to meet them where they are so everyone can advance together.
Looking in from the outside, the conference theme of “How Far We’ve Come” may seem ironic for an event based in a state that is working hard to roll back any inclusive and diverse initiatives that support open and equitable access. In spite of state and federal efforts, sessions on managing harmful content and description presented to packed rooms. In December 2024, TDL members started a new interest group on the topic. Involvement in the group is open to anyone regardless of institutional TDL membership or state residence. I am proud of my colleagues and peers working in libraries and archives in Texas for their tenacity to do good work and find ways to persevere in providing better access to their users. A lot of the support and courage to do that comes from the community built by TDL. Here’s to another 20 years of Open.