TCDL 2025

A workshops ticket is required to attend this session.

This workshop offers a practical, people-centered approach to making your work easier and more sustainable. Process management provides a structured framework for analyzing, designing, and optimizing workflows to meet organizational needs. Unlike project management, which focuses on delivering specific outcomes, process management emphasizes continuous improvement and efficiency within the systems that sustain digital library and archive operations.

But process management isn’t just about workflows—it’s about fostering clarity, collaboration, and meaningful impact. This workshop will show how refining everyday processes can reduce stress, empower teams, and help you and your organization thrive. Participants will learn how to identify and address bottlenecks, streamline processes, adopt tools that truly support their work, and establish sustainable practices that allow them to focus on what matters most.

Drawing insights from the author's recent book, this session provides a comprehensive foundation for implementing process-oriented solutions tailored to digital library ecosystems. Through interactive exercises, relatable case studies, and hands-on practice with effective methodologies, attendees will leave equipped with actionable strategies to lighten their workload, strengthen their teams, and build more resilient systems.

A workshops ticket is required to attend this session.

During this workshop session we will be providing information about all the basics of professional papers and profiles - from Resumes and CVs to Cover Letters to LinkedIn profiles. The session will also include time to work on drafting a resume, CV, and/or a Cover Letter.

Iterating on Internships: Seeing How Far the Texas Tech Library's Digital Scholarship Internship Has Come Since 2022
By: Matthew McEniry & Megan Scott

In 2022, the Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) at Texas Tech University Libraries was given the opportunity to create an internship position. Since then, we have had five interns participate in the Digital Scholarship Internship program. The objective of this program is to pull away the curtain of digital scholarship and teach its principles to students interested in careers in the fields of the humanities and/or Galleries, Libraries, Archives, & Museums (GLAMs). The goal is to guide interns in taking an unprocessed archival collection through all the steps to develop it into a digital collection that is fully described and available in our DSpace repository. This includes being exposed to project management processes, copyright curation, equipment and process training, digitization workflows, digital content management Systems (CMS) like DSpace, and metadata creation. The presentation will highlight the challenges faced and lessons learned over the past 3 years. This includes developing a new program, creating an application process, the designing of different iterations and improvements applied to each cohort, constructing a framework for teaching about digital scholarship, and honing professional skills. Finally, we will look at objectives for future cohorts.

What a News-ance!: Developing Training Methods for Issue-Level, Newspaper Metadata
By: Hannah Gale Lindsey & Brooke Edsall

The Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP) digitizes newspapers from across Texas for open access and digital preservation on The Portal to Texas History. Newspapers, though viewed as consistent records of information, are businesses that pass through multiple hands as they publish over time. Because of this, item level newspaper metadata standards must adapt to allow for a consistent standard while also presenting items accurately. With these serial publications, the Digital Newspaper Unit (DNU) at UNT Libraries cannot reliably predict all potential problems that may occur when creating item level metadata for newspapers. This inconsistency of newspapers pose unique challenges for teaching student assistants to create issue-level metadata. To address this, the DNU has created training tools and exercises intended to simultaneously teach metadata standards and critical-thinking and problem-solving skills to support students in adapting to unpredictable metadata needs. By further developing its training methods, the DNU has developed strategies and tools for assessing and supporting student success with these skills, through a student-centered, holistic approach to training. As a result, students are not only better employees, but they are also better prepared for future careers. This presentation will present the process of developing and implementing these tools, how the DNU measures the tools’ levels of success, and the unit's plans for further development of training materials.

Many academic libraries employ staff who do not hold an MLIS but contribute significantly to research support, digital scholarship, and collection management. Despite their expertise—often supported by advanced degrees in other disciplines—these professionals often face limited or unclear career advancement opportunities.

This panel will explore the challenges and possibilities for non-librarian staff seeking promotion within library systems. Panelists will share their experiences navigating institutional policies, advocating for recognition, and making decisions about further education. Discussion topics will include the role of advanced degrees, alternative promotion pathways, and strategies for fostering equitable career growth.

By bringing together voices from different institutional contexts, this session will offer insights into how libraries can better support professional development for all staff—regardless of job title.

As digital collection projects grow in complexity in cultural heritage institutions, so has the need for library professionals to step into the role of product owners. In the agile framework, a product owner is the liaison between the development team and the product stakeholders. This is often a solitary role requiring leadership, project management, communication, and advocacy. A role that isn’t taught but rather learned through years of experience… or a trial by fire. Is there any way to prepare for it? In this Idea Lab, we will learn from each other’s challenges and successes, create community around a shared experience, and identify creative strategies for helping each other make this solitary role more library-centered.