Another Successful Year at Lone Star Zine Fest

The UT Libraries tabled at the 8th Annual Lone Star Zine Fest on October 19th and 20th. We Librarians were able to connect with the local community of zinesters through outreach as well as purchasing new materials for the collection.

What is a zine? To put it simply, a zine is a DIY publication, traditionally made on printer paper, meant to spread awareness of a particular issue or to find certain communities that share the same interests. Historically, zines have been used to bypass the barriers of traditional publishing, making them a speedy and inexpensive way to share information utilizing print materials.

The Blue Genie Art Bazaar (the site chosen to host the fest) was filled to the brim with zines that October Weekend. With over 100 vendors, we zine librarians had our work cut out for us. Not only did we table at the fest to promote UT’s free-to-read zine collection, we also prepared for purchasing and were eager to find new titles to add to the stacks.

Tabling at the fest brought a few new challenges. Last year’s fest ran for one day, while this year it grew into two. This is due to the huge success of the previous year’s event, with over 1000 people attending the fest. We spread the word to the UT Libraries community and received interest from fellow staff and graduate research assistants in assisting us with our outreach efforts. Having volunteers as extra eyes at the event proved to be more helpful than we thought. They brought back fabulous purchase suggestions as they perused the vendors throughout the building.

With pen and paper in hand, we scoured the building looking for locally-made zines that would add oomph to our current collection, such as comic zines for the Fine Arts Library and chapbooks for the PCL Poetry Center. We also looked for zines on topics that would resonate with students and could be added to our teaching toolkit for zine workshops we hold periodically throughout the year. Two of our favorite vendors – Chan Channel and Table for Two Publications – are alumni from the College of Fine Arts who often visited the Fine Arts Library. They were excited to meet us and thrilled to have their work represented in our zine collection for future art and design students. All in all, we purchased over 100 zines at the fest for the Libraries!

Our outreach at the Lone Star Zine Fest was a major success. We talked to over 400 attendees about the collection, surprising many with the fact that the UT Libraries are open to the public. Many expressed interest in visiting campus (we look forward to seeing y’all)! This concludes our sixth year tabling at the fest and we hope to continue to do so for many years to come.

Are you interested in learning more about the UT Zine Collection? Please visit our LibGuide here.

Illuminating Explorations: Israeli Cinema in the 20th Century

“Illuminating Explorations” – This series of digital exhibits is designed to promote and celebrate UT Libraries collections in small-scale form. The exhibits will highlight unique materials to elevate awareness of a broad range of content. “Illuminating Explorations” will be created and released over time, with the intent of encouraging use of featured and related items, both digital and analog, in support of new inquiries, discoveries, enjoyment and further exploration.


The Israeli Cinema in the 20th Century  exhibition provides a concise survey of Israeli cinema from its beginnings up until the end of the 20th century, while highlighting the UT Libraries Israeli Cinema & Film Collection. Teaching and learning through filmic content provide valuable insights into historical events, cultural contexts, social issues, and artistic expressions. Textual content documents the evolution of film theory, criticism, and production. By preserving this body of knowledge and the intellectual heritage of filmmakers, critics, and scholars, the collection supports the research of Israeli society through cinema and film.

This is the Land (Barukh Agadati, 1935)
This is the Land (Barukh Agadati, 1935)

The exhibition starts with a short overview of the filmic production in Israel from its beginnings in pre-1948 Palestine until the end of the 1990s. It then divides into five sections: the first describes early beginnings through the 1950s, while the remaining four sections are organized by decades (60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s). Each section describes cinematic trends or phenomena, and shows how historical events were analyzed through films in that period of time. From early beginnings (as early as 1911) the filmic production promoted the Zionist project, and later on, well into the early 1960’s, it was utilized to support and promote the heroic Israeli ethos of ‘a few against many.’ During the years, the Israeli cinema has matured; from the 1960’s and on, it moved away from the national narrative, and developed a more critical treatment of societal processes, while venturing into genres such as satire, comedy, experimental, and personal cinema. As the young state developed and experienced major military conflicts, political shifts, and social and demographic changes, filmmakers reacted to those events in their work, dealing with topics such as the Israeli-Arab conflict, ethnic tensions, and queer life experiences from a personal point of view. 

Hill Halfon Doesn’t Answer (Assi Dayan, 1976)
Hill Halfon Doesn’t Answer (Assi Dayan, 1976)

While the exhibit highlights images of DVD covers from the Israeli Cinema & Film Collection, the broader collection includes many other items that could tell the story of Israeli cinema. UT Libraries collects everything that is or about Israeli cinema and film, including pre-1948 items, in all languages and in all formats. As would be expected, the collection is comprised of Audio-Visual content in various genres (features, documentaries, shorts, TV series) and on various media (VHS, DVD, streaming), but it also includes textual materials, either in print or digital, such as books, periodicals, film festival catalogs & programs, film screening programs, film school publications, original scripts, exhibition catalogs, promotional/commercial publications, theses and dissertations, instructional materials, film industry documentation, governmental reports, and ephemera. The entire collection is discoverable through the UT Libraries catalog.

Life according to Agfa (Assi Dayan, 1992)
Life according to Agfa (Assi Dayan, 1992)

Read, Hot and Digitized: The Complex History of Bananas Depicted in Artistic Works

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship.  Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.


The banana has been used in many forms of art, ranging from paintings to sculpture, and demonstrated its popularity in iconography throughout the years. Why are bananas so popular, both as a fruit and as a modern emoji? One digital exhibit seeks to spread context behind the banana by organizing visual depictions of the fruit through Latin American artworks.

Banana Craze, a bilingual digital research project created by Juanita and Blanca Solano and translated by Banana Link, showcases the dark past and present of the banana industry, and how it has shaped the regions affected by the plantations. The database is available for viewing in both Spanish and English.

Before the globalization of the banana, the fruit itself was hardly eaten outside of its native regions. As the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) established plantations throughout Latin American countries and the Caribbean, bananas became a monoculture industry in itself, now being the number one sold fruit around the world.

The Banana Craze website itself is not only a visual spectacle, but it also features organizational tools so that the viewer can dive deeper into individual artists as well as explore the art on a timeline to provide historical context. For example, the images of this gold leafed banana plant can be found in Mariá José Argerenzio’s entry in the alphabetized index. Maria is an Ecuadorian artist who created the installation to emphasize the extraction of two major resources from Ecuador, bananas and gold, linking Spanish empire colonialism to more modern day practices that exacerbate the region’s environmental health and disparities in wealth.

The viewer can also explore the artworks by other subcategories, such as violences, ecosystems, and country location. Violences is one of the three thematic ways to view the website through the curatorial lenses of the exhibit creators. This framework exercises the function of a digital art exhibit, allowing viewers to explore the history of banana culture with selected artworks.

Building such an interactive online exhibit requires the use of a digital tool that is catered to accessible viewership. The meticulous metadata for each artwork blends seamlessly with each page, allowing me to search and view specific content, while keeping me immersed in the overall project. The multipage exhibits provide context and can function either as a digital archive or art database, depending on how I chose to begin my journey. I appreciated that I can view all the images and documents on the site without downloading any attachments. This provided for a seamless viewing experience.

The exhibit was a visual feast for the eyes. Its contrasting colors are electrifying, almost bordering on jarring, and produces an effective look as I went on to view the art and how they symbolize the practices that have affected the people, the land, and the traditions of Latin America and beyond.

Want to learn more about the history of bananas or protest art? Check out these resources from the UT Libraries:

D’Souza, A., Bright, P., & Lumumba, P. (2018). Whitewalling : art, race & protest in 3 acts. Badlands Unlimited.

Fassio, D., Seuret, F., & Abita, V. (2010). Banana wars: A presentation of Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Films for the Humanities and Sciences.

Koeppel, D. (2008). Banana : The fate of the fruit that changed the world. Hudson Street Press.

Mercurio, G., & Banksy. (2020). A visual protest : the art of Banksy. (English edition.). Prestel.

Portillo Villeda, S. G. (2021). Roots of resistance : A story of gender, race, and labor on the north coast of Honduras. (1st Ed.). University of Texas Press.

Tags: art, history, food

[1] 


This is a fun blog post and a quirky yet incredible important interventional art project. Great work bringing it to everyone’s attention through this post, Tina!

OA Week 2024 Recap

Open Access Week 2024 at the University of Texas Libraries provided an engaging platform for exploring Open Access (OA) issues and celebrating community-focused approaches to knowledge sharing. With the theme Community over Commercialization, the week featured events, blog posts, and social media highlights aimed at fostering awareness of OA principles and practices.

A centerpiece event during the week was an informative panel on the evolving landscape of open access, addressing both faculty and student interests. The discussion focused on the importance of community-driven models and equitable access to research outputs.

The week’s blog posts at the Open Access blog served as a rich resource, covering topics like the “OA Initiatives Annual Report,” which celebrated the Libraries’ recent successes in supporting OA publishing and international partnerships, and “Theses, Dissertations, and Embargoes,” which offered guidance to students on managing access to their research. Another post on “Preprints” detailed how these early research outputs promote rapid knowledge sharing, and the final post, “Open Access Business Models,” discussed sustainable funding pathways for OA initiatives.

Throughout the week, the Libraries shared a series of social media posts to spotlight OA topics and resources, including a Sticker Shock price comparison, and a Highlighting Diverse Collections featuring open resources, which provided followers with easy-to-understand overviews and encouraged engagement with OA resources available through Libraries, as well as Tocker Open Education Librarian Heather Walter’s pithy meme-ified posts (1, 2, 3) that are a favorite with the Libraries’ more youthful followers.

In alignment with OA Week, the Libraries also announced “Important Changes Coming to Public Access for Federally Funded Research,” signaling a new phase in research accessibility. This announcement addressed policy updates stemming from the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Nelson memo, outlining upcoming shifts in how federally funded research will be shared with the public, underscoring the Libraries’ role in helping researchers navigate these changes.

Together, these events, posts, and resources underscored  the Libraries’ commitment to advancing open access and fostering a collaborative, community-oriented approach to scholarly communication. Open Access Week 2024 effectively highlighted the Libraries’ ongoing efforts to ensure that research is accessible and impactful for both the academic community and the broader public.

Primeros Libros Triennial Takes Place in Oaxaca

The 2024 Primeros Libros Triennial Partner Meeting and Symposium, held at the Francisco de Burgoa Library in Oaxaca on October 10–11, brought together scholars, librarians and cultural heritage experts to celebrate and examine the legacy of early Mexican printed books and their impact on understanding the colonial period.

The Primeros Libros de las Américas project is a collaborative digital initiative to preserve and provide access to the first books printed in the Americas during the 16th century. It emphasizes the creation of a comprehensive digital corpus to promote global access and scholarship. With contributions from institutions across Europe and the Americas, the project embodies the shared heritage of colonial Mexico and serves as a vital resource for understanding the history of print, culture and language in the New World.

Day 1 of the gathering opened with a keynote lecture, “The Christian Doctrine in Mixtec by Fray Benito Hernández (1567-1568): Its Historical and Current Context,” delivered by a panel of experts, including bilingual educators, psychologists, and philologists. The presentation highlighted efforts to preserve indigenous Mixtec texts through interdisciplinary research.

Panel discussions throughout the day explored the artistry and subversion in 16th-century Mexican prints, including analyses of the unique Franciscan Library’s “Warnings for Indian Confessors” and the survival of anti-colonial Nahuatl codices.

A virtual presentation from the Biblioteca Statale di Lucca shed light on the discovery of rare early American prints in European collections, illustrating the transatlantic reach of colonial print culture.

The second day delved deeper into the lives of early printers, such as Pedro Ocharte and the Calderón family, with a spotlight on technological advances in printmaking during the colonial era. Discussions also explored the circulation and reception of printed works across the Americas, including a case study of an indigenous sacristan in Zacatecas who risked punishment to preserve knowledge.

The symposium also included a visit to the Juan de Córdova Research Library and concluded with a book presentation on the history of engraving in Mexican print. Scholars and participants hailed the event as a critical platform for fostering collaboration and preserving the shared heritage of the Americas.

For more information about Primeros Libros and ongoing preservation initiatives, visit primeroslibros.org.

NEH-Funded Project Pioneers AI Solutions for Spanish Colonial Texts

Work on the “Unlocking the Colonial Archive” project – which was funded through the NEH/AHRC New Directions for Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions program,  a collaborative initiative between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council – has been completed. 

Dr. Kelly McDonough, Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Dr. Albert A. Palacios, LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Coordinator and lecturer in the School of Information, co-led the three-year initiative. With $149,915.00 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the project has focused on transcribing digitized Spanish colonial materials in the Benson Latin American Collection and its post-custodial partners, addressing linguistic challenges in Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technologies, and sharing innovative workflows with the scholarly community.

Key activities include the development of HTR models for Spanish calligraphic styles from the 16th through the 18th century, the establishment of a publicly accessible data repository for transcriptions of Benson collection materials, and the organization of paleography and digital humanities institutes that benefitted scholars from over 15 countries and 20 U.S. states.

Project dissemination has been extensive, with presentations and keynote speeches at conferences and institutions across Latin America and the United States, highlighting the use of artificial intelligence in historical research. 

You can read more about the program activities here: https://apps.neh.gov/publicquery/AwardDetail.aspx?gn=HC-278116-21 and read the final project white paper here: https://hdl.handle.net/2152/129230.

Former Chilean President Bachelet Champions Women’s Leadership and Equality in Public Address

The Honorable Michelle Bachelet, former President of Chile and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, addressed a crowd at the Benson Latin American Collection on October 16. Part of the Mary Ann Faulkner Distinguished Lecture Series in Latin American Public Affairs and Politics, the event was hosted by the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies (LLILAS).

Bachelet made history as the first woman to serve as President of Chile, holding office for two non-consecutive terms (2006–2010 and 2014–2018). Born in 1951 in Santiago, Chile, she grew up in a politically active family and pursued a career in medicine, specializing in pediatrics and public health. Her life took a dramatic turn during Chile’s military dictatorship when her father, a general loyal to President Salvador Allende, was arrested and died in custody, and she herself was detained and tortured. After returning from exile in the 1980s, Bachelet became a prominent advocate for democracy and human rights. She later entered politics, serving as Minister of Health and Minister of National Defense before ascending to the presidency. Following her time in office, she was appointed as the first Executive Director of UN Women and later served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2018 to 2022, continuing her lifelong commitment to social justice and equality.

Before the evening event, Bachelet visited the Benson’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Reading Room, where she was provided an introduction to the archive with a viewing of rare materials led by Benson Director Melissa Guy, Head of User Services AJ Johnson and Head of Special Collections Ryan Lynch.

The evening talk began with an introduction from LLILAS Director Adela Pineda Franco, who underscored Bachelet’s influence on democratic governance and human rights worldwide, then Bachelet launched into a talk focused on women’s leadership and gender equality across the Americas, set against a backdrop of rising authoritarianism and rights erosion. Reflecting on setbacks for women’s rights globally, Bachelet touched on issues such as recent limitations on reproductive rights in the U.S., elimination of Argentina’s Ministry of Women and gendered restrictions in Afghanistan. She argued that women’s rights must remain integral to discussions on democracy, noting that societal progress is hindered when women’s contributions are overlooked.

Bachelet also explored the impact of artificial intelligence on women’s employment, emphasizing the need for a human rights framework to prevent biased AI systems. She called for greater diversity in AI development, pointing to a male-dominated tech sector where gender biases could impact future job markets.

Immediately following her address, Dean JR DeShazo of the LBJ School of Public Affairs interviewed Bachelet on the challenges and progress in women’s leadership and gender equality in the Americas. Bachelet emphasized the importance of inclusive policies and the need for continuous efforts to address systemic inequalities. She highlighted her experiences in overcoming political and social barriers, underscoring the role of resilience and strategic optimism in advancing human rights and gender parity. The discussion also touched upon the impact of global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, on women’s rights, and the necessity for collaborative international approaches to safeguard and promote gender equality.

Bachelet concluded the evening by encouraging attendees to champion gender equality as a foundational element of democratic integrity. Her call to action extended to the university’s community, encouraging students, faculty and future leaders to break barriers and advocate for equitable representation.

Books, Bookstores, and Bonds

Last July I went to Israel for yet another successful acquisition trip, made possible by the generous support of UT’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The Schusterman Center, and donations to a recent UT Libraries’ HornRaiser campaign. In previous trips, my efforts were centered around the acquisition of unique items for our collection; this is, after all, one of the main objectives of such trips. But this time around, I decided to emphasize networking — meeting old vendors (who are now good friends) and making acquaintances with new ones — while still leaving time for hunting for and purchasing materials. Since it was a relatively short week-long trip, and due to the tension in the region, I mainly visited the Tel Aviv area, with some short-day trips to Jerusalem and Haifa.

As always, I bumped into acquisition opportunities that I could not resist. The most exciting one being a set of 118 back issues of Israeli cinema periodicals that fill in gaps in UT’s holdings. When I went to visit Na’im, who works at the Little Prince Bookstore and Café and is a long time vendor acquaintance of mine, he asked me to follow him to his ‘kingdom’ at the second floor… and when he does that, you know that some treasures are to be found! We were sitting there for a couple hours, sorting those issues. A few days later, I returned to the shop and he handed me a box – “look what I found upstairs!” Sure enough, again I could not resist an offer of dozens more items related to Israeli film & cinema.

The Little Prince – Books and Coffee, Tel Aviv, Israel.
The Little Prince – Books and Coffee, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Nurturing friendships with vendors proves to be fruitful not only when it comes to acquiring materials; we also work together in order to make the entire process of acquisition easier and more efficient. For example, back at my office in Austin before this trip, I worked with one of my other vendors in Tel Aviv and together we prepared a ‘real-time’ inventory of the library’s main cinema periodicals. I took that inventory with me on my trip and found that it made checking holdings ‘on the ground’ so much easier and it helped me to not acquire duplicates. I used this inventory list extensively when Na’im and I sorted out those issues at his storage.

Also in Tel Aviv, I paid a visit to another dear vendor who has become a friend – Fanny from Fanny’s Bookshelf. Her store is one of those second-hand book stores that one can hardly move in – full with books to the brim. Like Na’im’s ‘secret’ storage area in the café’s second floor, Fanny keeps her special items away from regular customers’ reach—but be sure this is the first area I look at when I drop by! While there have been some visits when I found rare materials there, this time around I didn’t have much luck. Yet, I am undeterred as one could never know when and where the next ‘stellar’ find would appear; when it comes to collecting, patience is a virtue! 

Person at far end of tall metal shelves with books in a bookstore. Fanny’s Bookshelf, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Fanny’s Bookshelf, Tel Aviv, Israel.  

In Jerusalem, I was able to visit and build networks with both people and institutions.  For example, I went to see the new building of the Israeli National Library, with a friend who has some ‘connections,’ so we got a tour in their preservation labs and the enormous underground robotic storage area. I also paid a visit to the Hansen House Center for Design, Media and Technology that is housed in an impressive historic building, a former leprosy hospital built in 1887. Meeting with colleagues there, I managed to put my hand on some rare issues of a Jerusalemite independent journal of arts, culture and society titled Erev Rav (“mixed multitude”).

Also while in Jerusalem, I was able to attend the opening event of the Jerusalem Film Festival where I had the opportunity to grab this year’s festival’s catalog. Film festival catalogs are always hard to acquire, because they do not sell in stores and usually, would not be considered as literature to be included in library collections. Yet, they contain valuable information about films, filmmakers, and the local film industry. Acquiring such catalogs is a constant work of hunting and relying not only on vendors, but also on scholars in the field. In fact, the lion’s share of our current holdings of both the Jerusalem and Haifa Film Festivals’ catalogs was donated to UTL by a film studies professor at the Tel Aviv University, who I met during one of my past acquisition trips.

During my career I’ve learned that networking in conferences, combined with work on the ground, could lead to small but significant ‘success stories.’ See for example, this previous post about my 2015 trip.  This past summer I has a similar experience in the Association for Israel Studies conference in Prague. I attended a talk by a literature professor who teaches at Oranim college in the north of Israel. When we spoke afterwards over coffee, I mentioned that I’ve been searching for a Hebrew literature periodical published by her college. She immediately introduced me via email to a colleague of hers at their publishing house. When I arrived in Israel a few days later on my acquisition trip, I was gifted a full run of their literature journal, around 25 issues. The impact of cultivating personal connections across continents adds significant value to our collections.

A Flood of Action to Save the Books

Catastrophe was narrowly averted due to a water leak at the Walter Geology Library in late September thanks to direct, coordinated action from library staff and Jackson School of Geosciences personnel.

The incident began with an unexpected leak in a wet lab on the fifth floor of the Jackson School, above the Walter Geology Library. The leak was discovered early Tuesday morning by Jackson School staff, who immediately alerted the building manager and the library team. Water made its way from a compromised holding tank in a lab, penetrating sections of the ceiling, flooding the library and damaging materials in the stacks.

In a show of composure, several University of Texas Libraries (UTL) staff members, some of whom learned about the emergency while on their way to work, diverted to the Geology Library to take immediate action. The response was focused, methodical and purposed at mitigating and preventing further damage to collection materials. The team swiftly began moving wet books to safer locations, covering vulnerable stacks with plastic sheeting and vacuuming up standing water to stem the immediate threat to the collections.

Once the situation was somewhat stabilized, the next priority became rescuing the most severely damaged items. Staff worked diligently to identify these items and began preparing them for preservation by freezing them in the Perry-Castañeda Library’s (PCL) preservation freezers. Freezing wet materials is a well-established method to prevent mold growth and give preservation staff time to determine the best treatment methods.

As soon as standing water cleared, the focus shifted to restoring the environment. Dehumidifiers and fans were brought in to ensure that residual moisture was dealt with effectively, minimizing long-term damage to the collections and the library environment.

Careful attention was then paid to the individual items that had been impacted. Teams of staff interleaved wet pages with coated paper to absorb excess moisture, unfolded map inserts to lay them flat for drying, and fanned out books to improve air circulation. This painstaking process continued throughout the day on Tuesday, showcasing not only the technical expertise of the team but also their unwavering commitment to safeguarding knowledge.  Staff continue to monitor the space and repairs to damaged items are expected to continue for several months.

The recent water leak evoked memories of a much larger disaster that struck the former Marine Science Library in 2017. During the catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey, library staff worked around the clock to rescue rare collections that were at risk from the rising waters. The response to that event, while on a greater scale, carried the same resolve as this week’s efforts at the Geology Library – demonstrating the immense dedication of libraries staff to respond to disasters that might otherwise destroy the collections they oversee.

Libraries are not just places where information is stored; they are custodians of our collective human record, preserving materials in perpetuity so that future generations may learn from and build upon the past. Emergencies like the leak at the Walter Geology Library remind us how fragile that mission can be – and how it truly takes a village of committed individuals to protect these collections.

From pulling books off shelves to quickly interleaving wet pages, every action taken by library staff this week was aimed at preventing irreparable loss. It was a stark reminder of the importance of collective action in the face of emergencies that threaten the Libraries’ commitment to the preservation of knowledge.

The response to the Walter Geology Library incident highlights an idea that lies at the core of every library: the mission to preserve and protect collections is not an abstract ideal. It is a hands-on, all-hands effort, and one that requires dedication, expertise and a deep belief that the knowledge of today is a legacy to the future.

“I am so grateful to our staff for a commitment to their work so pronounced that they respond without hesitation to challenges,” says Vice Provost and Director Lorraine Haricombe. “Thanks to the efforts of the people involved, over 1,200 books will continue to be available for use in research and scholarship for all those who might need them.”

Humble gratitude to all the people involved in this effort:

Margaret Alvarado

Geoff Bahre

Chris Carter

Brittany Centeno

Benn Chang

Morgan Colbert

Elizabeth De Marco

Loren Fiebrich

Claudia Fuentes

James Galloway

Bill Gannon

Dave Gilson

Mirko Hanke

Meghana Kamat

Jennifer Lee

Joey Marez

Wendy Martin

Sean O’Bryan

Michael Rodriguez

Kent Scott

Tony Tomasello

Britt Wilson

Advisory Council Joins with iSchool for Day of Advocacy

On September 26, the Fall 2024 gathering of the University of Texas Libraries Advisory Council brought together library advocates for a day of engaging discussions, presentations and tours. The council, along with the iSchool Advisory Council, convened to hear updates, set goals, and strengthen connections within the library community.

The day began with a joint lunch that included Interim Dean Dr. Soo Young Rieh from the School of Information, followed by an afternoon session focused on updates from the Libraries. Lorraine J. Haricombe, Vice Provost and Director of UT Libraries, delivered a state of the library address, followed by a development report from Claire Burrows, Director of Development. The development report shared that the Libraries are closing in on their $12 million capital campaign goal, with a current total of $10.36 million raised and an additional $2 million goal for FY25. It also highlighted areas of need, such as Open Educational Resources (OER), fellowships and endowed positions.

Assistant Director of Research Support & Digital Innovation Allyssa Guzman joined the Libraries’ Resident Librarians – Cristina Berron, Elizabeth Garza, and Ana Rico – who shared their experiences and the goals of the Libraries’ Residency Program, established as a career pipeline for early-career librarians and archivists. The council learned about the program and were introduced to the newly established Artaza Castañeda Family Librarian Residency Professional Development Fund, which supports the residents in their career development.

Council members were given a tour of the recently renovated 4th and 5th floors of the Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL). The day concluded with a reconvening of the Libraries’ and iSchool Councils at a social event, facilitating rich conversations about the evolving role of libraries, the library profession and, of course, books.

The Advisory Council’s primary mission is to advocate for UT Libraries by raising awareness of its impact, supporting fundraisers and generating charitable contributions. The meeting also included discussions about upcoming events, including a presentation by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet at the Benson Collection (scheduled for October 16).

The success of the day was made possible by the contributions of the Libraries staff, whose planning and support efforts ensured a worthwhile and impactful experience for all who attended.

UT Libraries