The Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) is a collaborative archival project aimed at preserving and promoting the use of fragile human rights records from around the world, in order to support human rights advocates working for the defense of vulnerable communities and individuals. The HRDI was established at the University of Texas Libraries with a generous grant from the Bridgeway Foundation in 2008. Additionally, the Human Rights Documentation Initiative has partnered with the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice to identify key strategic issues for the initiative as well as provide relevant programming to the UT Austin community and beyond.
The HRDI preserves and provides access to paper-based collections, as well as digitized and born-digital audiovisual collections that are global in scope. Recognizing the importance of online human rights advocacy and the fragility of web content, the HRDI also maintains an archive of websites related to human rights issues, which is updated quarterly.
A number of the collections found on this site have been preserved and made available through post-custodial archival collaborations between the HRDI and partner organizations and repositories. Post-custodialism is a collaborative approach to providing access to archival collections that preserves physical archives within their original contexts of creation while also creating digital copies for wider access. Through these collaborations, the HRDI aims to support the development of partners’ archival capacity, particularly in the areas of digitization, preservation, arrangement, description, and access.
About the New Platform
The new version of the HRDI site integrates streaming, search, and browse functionality alongside information about each project partner and the HRDI web archive in a single mobile-friendly interface. To fully accommodate international audiences, several pages are available in both English and Spanish, including those describing Spanish-language collections. The previous HRDI website launched in 2008 and was retired in 2020, when Adobe Flash was discontinued. An archived copy of the previous site and the retired HRDI blog are each available via the Wayback Machine.
Radio Venceremos, the rebel radio station that broadcast from the mountains of Morazán, El Salvador, during the eleven-year Salvadoran Civil War (1981–1992), produced an important collection of recordings that contain valuable historic, anthropological, and ethnographic information, particularly in regards to human rights violations during an era of social transformation in Central America. This recording from December 31, 1981, contains an interview with Rufina Amaya about the massacre at El Mozote: Radio Venceremos Recording
Four-part account of Albert Chammah and Oran Young’s 1976 visit to Syria to investigate the political, social, and economic status of the Jewish community there. The account details the contemporary size of the Jewish communities in several Syrian cities, formal restrictions imposed by the Syrian government, and general social discrimination. Albert Chammah was a professor at UT Austin, while Oran Young was a graduate student at the time: Conversation between Albert Chammah and Oren Young
This account was transferred from two cassette tapes, donated to the HRDI by Albert Chammah’s son Maurice. Maurice Chammah is an Austin-based journalist and staff writer for The Marshall Project, focusing on capital punishment and the criminal justice system in the United States.
Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) is a human rights and restorative justice project that studies the effects of interpersonal and state violence on individuals, families, and communities. The collection includes hundreds of hours of personal testimony that serves as a resource for community dialogue and public policy to promote alternative, nonviolent ways to prevent and respond to violence. Watch: Interview with Donna Hogan
David A. Bliss is digital archivist at the University of Texas Libraries.
Vea abajo para versión en español / Veja em baixo para versão em português
In honor of World Digital Preservation Day, members of the University of Texas Libraries’ Digital Preservation team have written a series of blog posts to highlight preservation activities at UT Austin, and to explain why the stakes are so high in our ever-changing digital and technological landscape. This post is part two in a series of five.Read part one.
By KATIE PIERCE MEYER, PhD, Head of Architectural Collections, Alexander Architectural Archives | @kpiercemeyer @UT_APL
Architectural archives are confronting
challenges associated with collecting born-digital records, as computer-aided
design and building information modeling has become standard in architecture,
design, planning, and historic preservation. The resulting digital design
records complicate long-term preservation in archival repositories, as many of
these are created using a variety of (often proprietary) software programs.
Over the past few years, the Alexander Architectural Archives took its first steps toward processing born-digital media from a collection donated by a historic preservation architecture firm. The Alexander Archives has approached this effort as a learning opportunity – for students and staff – to develop digital preservation knowledge. Graduate research assistants have learned about digital archives and preservation at the UT School of Information and apply their new skills, working with staff at the Alexander Architectural Archives and UT Libraries’ Digital Stewardship unit to develop preservation plans, recover data from legacy media, create preservation images to be vaulted to tape, and draft public access workflows.
Read more about these efforts and the learning process from the perspective of one of the GRAs at the Alexander Architectural Archives.
Archivos de Arquitectura Alexander
Traducido por Jennifer Isasi
Para el Día Mundial de la Preservación Digital, los miembros del equipo de Preservación Digital de las Bibliotecas de la Universidad de Texas han escrito una serie de entradas de blog que hacen destacar las actividades de preservación en la universidad, y para enfatizar la importancia de la preservación en un presente de cambio tecnológico constante. Este texto es el segundo en una serie de cinco.Lea el primer texto.
Los nuevos
registros digitales están representan un desafío para su recopilación por parte
de los archivos de arquitectura al haberse convertido el diseño y modelado de
construcción por computadora en el estándar en arquitectura, diseño,
planificación y preservación histórica. Los registros de diseño digital
complican la preservación a largo plazo en los repositorios del archivo puesto
que son creados con diferentes programas informáticos, muchas veces patentado.
En los últimos años, los Archivos de Arquitectura Alexander (Alexander Architectural Archives) dieron sus primeros pasos hacia el procesamiento de medios de origen digital de una colección donada por una firma de arquitectura de conservación del patrimonio histórico. Los Archivos Alexander han abordado este esfuerzo como una oportunidad de aprendizaje para el desarrollo de conocimiento de preservación digital, tanto para estudiantes como para su personal. Los asistentes de investigación graduados que han aprendido sobre archivos digitales y preservación en la Escuela de Información de UT aplican sus nuevas habilidades trabajando con el personal de la unidad de Administración Digital de Archivos de Arquitectura Alexander y las Bibliotecas de UT para desarrollar planes de preservación, recuperar datos de medios analógicos y crear imágenes de preservación para ser guardadas en cinta.
Lea más (en inglés) sobre estos esfuerzos y el proceso de aprendizaje desde la perspectiva de uno de los estudiantes graduados de los Archivos de Arquitectura Alexander.
Arquivos Arquitectônicos Alexander
Traduzido por Tereza Braga
Para o Dia Mundial da Preservação Digital, os membros do equipe de Preservação Digital das Bibliotecas da Universidade de Texas escreveram uma serie de entradas de blog que enfatizam as atividades de preservação na nossa universidad, para explicar a importancia da preservação no contexto de um presente de tecnología em fluxo constante. Este texto é o primeiro numa série de cinco.Ler o primer texto.
A área de
arquivística arquitetônica vem enfrentando diversos desafios ao congregar
registros criados em mídia digital (“born-digital records”) nesta era em que o
design por computador e a modelagem de dados para construção já se tornaram
padrões nos setores de arquitetura, projeto, planejamento e preservação
histórica. Os registros digitais resultantes desses processos complicam a
preservação a longo prazo em repositórios arquivísticos, pois muitos desses
registros são criados por programas de software diferenciados que
frequentemente são proprietários.
Há alguns
anos, o Alexander Architectural Archives tomou os primeiros passos para o
processamento de mídias criadas digitalmente, utilizando uma coleção doada por
uma firma de arquitetura de preservação histórica. A abordagem escolhida foi
encarar esse trabalho como uma oportunidade valiosa, oferecida não só a alunos
mas também a equipes profissionais, de desenvolver conhecimentos sobre
preservação digital. Foi criada uma equipe de GRAs (assistentes de pesquisa de
pós-graduação), que aprenderam tudo sobre arquivística e preservação digital na
Escola de Informação da UT e agora aplicam suas novas competências trabalhando
com os profissionais do Alexander Architectural Archives e da unidade de Gestão
Digital da UT Libraries para criar planos de preservação, recuperar dados
contidos em mídias antigas, criar imagens de preservação para depósito
eletrônico em fita, e elaborar fluxogramas para o acesso pelo público.
Aprenda mais (em inglês) sobre esse trabalho e
veja como foi o processo de aprendizado da equipe, ouvindo a perspectiva de um
dos GRAs atuando no Alexander Architectural Archives.
Vea abajo para versión en español / Veja em baixo para versão em português
In honor of World Digital Preservation Day, members of the University of Texas Libraries’ Digital Preservation team have written a series of blog posts to highlight preservation activities at UT Austin, and to explain why the stakes are so high in our ever-changing digital and technological landscape. This post is part one in a series of five.
Introduction to Digital Preservation
BY DAVID BLISS, Digital Processing Archivist, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections; ASHLEY ADAIR, Head of Preservation and Digital Stewardship University of Texas Libraries
In recent decades, the archival field has been transformed by the rise of digital historical records. As computers of all kinds have worked their way into many areas of our professional and personal lives, collections of documents donated to archives in order to preserve individual and institutional histories have come to comprise both traditional paper records and those created using these computers. Digital records can be scans of paper or other objects, born-digital files comparable to paper records, such as Word or text documents, or entirely new kinds of objects, such as video games. Archivists are committed to preserving digital records, just like physical ones, for future generations to use and study. Digital preservation refers to the full range of work involved in ensuring digital files remain accessible and readable in the face of changing hardware and software.
Unlike traditional physical media like paper,
which can typically be kept readable for decades or centuries with proper
housing and ambient conditions, digital files can be lost without periodic,
active intervention on the part of archivists: legacy file formats can become
unreadable on modern computers; hard drives and optical media can break or
degrade over time; and power outages can cause network storage to fail. Digital
archivists take steps to prevent and prepare for these contingencies.
There is no one perfect or even correct solution to the challenge of preserving digital files, so each institution may use different tools, standards, and hardware to carry out the work. Typically, however, digital preservation involves choosing suitable file formats, maintaining storage media and infrastructure, and organizing and describing digital objects in a standardized way that ensures future archivists and users can understand and access what has been preserved.
Digital preservation represents a significant effort that cannot be carried out by a single person or group. At the University of Texas Libraries, dissemination of digital preservation knowledge and skills is a crucial part of digital preservation practice. Training and pedagogy spread digital preservation expertise within the organization and out to researchers and partners, allowing the Libraries to preserve an ever-growing amount of valuable data.
Introducción a la
preservación digital
Para el Día Mundial de la Preservación Digital, los miembros del equipo de Preservación Digital de las Bibliotecas de la Universidad de Texas han escrito una serie de entradas de blog que hacen destacar las actividades de preservación en la universidad, y para enfatizar la importancia de la preservación en un presente de cambio tecnológico constante. Este texto es el primero en una serie de cinco.
Traducido por Jennifer Isasi, Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation in Latin American and Latina/o Studies
En décadas
recientes, el ámbito de los archivo se ha visto transformado con el aumento de
los registros históricos digitales. A medida que las computadoras de todo tipo
han pasado a formar parte de muchas áreas de nuestra vida profesional y
personal, las colecciones de documentos donados a los archivos para preservar
historias individuales e institucionales ahora presentan tanto los registros en
papel tradicionales como los creados con computadoras. Los registros digitales
pueden ser copias escaneadas de papel u otros objetos, archivos digitales
nativos similares a los registros en papel, como documentos de Word o texto, o
tipos de objetos completamente nuevos, como los videojuegos. Los archivistas
están comprometidos a preservar los registros digitales, al igual que los
físicos, para que las generaciones futuras los utilicen y estudien. Así, la
preservación digital se refiere a la gama completa de trabajo involucrado en
garantizar que los archivos digitales permanezcan accesibles y legibles ante el
cambio de hardware y software.
A
diferencia de los medios físicos tradicionales como el papel, que por lo
general pueden ser preservados por décadas o siglos en condiciones de guardado
adecuadas, los archivos digitales pueden perderse sin la intervención periódica
y activa por parte de los archivistas: las computadoras modernas no pueden leer
algunos de los formatos de archivo más antiguos, los discos duros o los medios
ópticos se pueden romper o degradar con el tiempo y los cortes de luz pueden
causar fallos en el almacenamiento en la red. Los archivistas digitales toman
medidas para prevenir o prepararse para este tipo de imprevistos.
No hay una
solución perfecta ni correcta para el desafío de preservar archivos digitales,
por lo que cada institución puede utilizar diferentes herramientas, estándares
y equipos para este trabajo. Por lo general, no obstante, la preservación
digital implica elegir formatos de archivo adecuados, mantener medios de
almacenaje y su infraestructura así como asegurar la organización y la
descripción de los objetos digitales de una manera estandarizada que garantice
que los futuros archivistas y usuarios puedan comprender y acceder al material
preservado.
El trabajo y esfuerzo necesarios para la preservación digital no puede ser realizado por una sola persona o grupo. En el conjunto de bibliotecas de la Universidad de Texas, la difusión del conocimiento sobre preservación digital es una parte crucial de la práctica de preservación. Mediante esfuerzos de capacitación y pedagógicos tanto dentro de la organización como entre investigadores y colaboradores, estas bibliotecas están logrando preservar una cantidad cada vez mayor de datos relevantes.
Introdução à preservação digital
Traduzido por Tereza Braga
Para o Dia Mundial da Preservação Digital, os membros do equipe de Preservação Digital das Bibliotecas da Universidade de Texas escreveram uma serie de entradas de blog que enfatizam as atividades de preservação na nossa universidad, para explicar a importancia da preservação no contexto de um presente de tecnología em fluxo constante. Este texto é o primeiro numa série de cinco.
O advento dos registros históricos digitais causou uma completa transformação do setor arquivístico nas últimas décadas. Computadores de todos os tipos estão cada vez mais presentes em cada vez mais aspectos da vida profissional e pessoal. Essa mudança também afeta as coleções de documentos que são doadas a instituições arquivísticas com o intuito de preservar histórias individuais e institucionais. Hoje em dia, uma coleção pode reunir tanto registros tradicionais em papel quanto registros criados por esses diversos computadores. O que chamamos de registro digital pode ser uma simples página ou objeto que tenha sido escaneado ou qualquer arquivo que já tenha nascido em forma digital e que seja comparável com um registro em papel como, por exemplo, um texto regidido em Word. Registro digital pode também significar uma coisa inteiramente nova como um videogame, por exemplo. Arquivistas são profissionais que se dedicam a preservar registros digitais para utilização e estudo por futuras gerações, como já é feito com os registros físicos. A preservação digital pode incluir uma ampla variedade de tarefas, todas com o objetivo comum de fazer com que um arquivo digital se mantenha acessível e legível mesmo com as frequentes mudanças na área de hardware e software.
Um arquivo digital é diferente do arquivo em papel ou outros meios físicos tradicionais, que geralmente pode ser mantido legível por muitas décadas ou mesmo séculos, se armazenado em invólucro adequado e sob as devidas condições ambientais. Um arquivo digital pode se perder para sempre se não houver uma intervenção periódica e ativa por parte de um arquivista. Certos arquivos em formatos mais antigos podem se tornar ilegíveis em computadores modernos. Discos rígidos e mídia ótica podem quebrar ou estragar com o tempo. Cortes de energia podem causar panes em sistemas de armazenagem em rede. O arquivista digital é o profissional que sabe tomar medidas tanto de prevenção quanto de preparação para essas e outras contingências.
Não existe solução perfeita, ou sequer correta, para o desafio que é preservar um arquivo digital. Diferentes instituições utilizam diferentes ferramentas, normas e hardware. De maneira geral, no entanto, as seguintes tarefas devem ser realizadas: escolher o formato de arquivo adequado; providenciar e manter uma mídia e infra-estrutura de armazenagem; e organizar e descrever os objetos digitais de uma maneira que seja padronizada e que permita a futuros arquivistas e usuários entender e acessar o que foi preservado.
A preservação digital é um empreendimento importante que não pode ser executado por apenas um indivíduo ou grupo. Na UT Libraries, a disseminação de conhecimentos e competências de preservação digital é uma parte essencial dessa prática. Temos cursos de capacitação e pedagogia para disseminar essa especialização em preservação digital para toda a organização e também para pesquisadores e parceiros externos. É esse trabalho que capacita a Libraries a preservar um grande volume de dados valiosos que não pára de crescer.
“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.
Turkey, or the Ottoman Empire, has long occupied the political and strategic sights of the West. Today’s news often focuses on the constitutional amendments—in some cases styled as reforms––that the Erdoğan government has pursued. In Western academia and media, these maneuvers are most often read as an “Islamist” approach to governance; they may be more accurately labeled neoliberal, and indeed follow patterns shared with other eras of reform and significant political change in Turkish history.
In recognition of the contemporary significance of Turkish political change and development, UT Libraries’ “Satire After the Young Turk Revolution” online exhibit brings to the fore poignant political cartoons featured in the bilingual (Ottoman Turkish-French) weekly magazine Kalem. Kalem was founded following the Young Turk Revolution in the early 20th century, a movement that sought to implement significant political and social reforms in the late Ottoman Empire. These reforms and the political issues raised at the time would continue to roil Ottoman society through the First World War and into the formation of the Turkish Republic.
The cartoon images have been selected for this exhibit because of their accessible meaning, illustration of the top issues of the time period, and aesthetic value. Kalem magazine was chosen for this exhibit because it represents UT Libraries’ rare Ottoman collections that are ripe for digitization to increase access for the public.
This exhibit will be of interest to those fascinated by pre-WWI Europe, the Ottoman Empire, satirical and political cartoons, and French publications in the Middle East. It will be of particular interest to researchers and students of the Middle East, early 20th century Europe, and popular art and literature across cultures.
As defined by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), “Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.” Open Education Resources are free to use and access, but the logistics of acquiring, managing, implementing access to, and defining OER is challenging for academic libraries. UT Libraries, along with our campus partners, are working to meet that challenge.
In response to a UT Libraries survey of potential scholarly communication projects for 2018, an OER Outreach Working Group was formed to create tools, resources, and training to help subject liaison librarians engage with OER issues.
What does the OER Outreach Working Group do?
The OER Outreach Working Group is comprised of librarians and professional staff from across campus. We meet monthly, and develop projects that seek to achieve the following:
Determine gaps in understanding or confidence
Look at peer institutions and/or best practices in OER education
Decide on resources to help address deficiencies
Plan for any informational workshops or the creation of resources
Get feedback on effectiveness of created resources
Make suggestions or plans for outreach about OER
Getting started: OER workshop for UT librarians, faculty, and staff
UT Libraries and the OER Working Group hosted 30 participants from departments across campus at a half-day workshop on July 24. The purpose of the workshop was to help campus partners define OER; introduce Creative Commons licensing; learn how to describe OER characteristics and benefits to faculty members and students; and be able to locate OER relevant to their discipline.
Two UT Austin faculty members shared their experience using and adopting OER for their courses. Dr. Jocelly Meiners, Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, uses OER lesson plans and exercises to teach her courses for Heritage Spanish learners. She articulated the need for OER among language faculty and their students, as many specialized courses do not have teaching materials commercially available. Dr. Amanda Hager, Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, shared her commitment to using OER to help lower financial costs for students and discussed faculty’s challenges to creating, using, and adopting OER. In post-workshop survey responses, many participants noted that hearing from faculty provided the meaningful insights about OER adoption, creation, and use – and would like to hear more from faculty at future workshops.
What’s next for OER at UT?
UT campus partners are ready to learn more about OER. Starting in Fall 2018, OER will be promoted at the new faculty expo and the Working Group will begin updating select LibGuides to incorporate more OERs for student and faculty use. The OER Working Group plans to re-invest in future workshops geared toward specific groups and/or projects, and if you are interested in learning more about OERs please contact UT Libraries Scholarly Communications Librarian, Colleen Lyon at c.lyon@austin.utexas.edu.
Gina Bastone (Humanities Librarian for English Literature & Women’s and Gender Studies), Sarah Brandt (Librarian for First Year Programs), Carolyn Cunningham (Social Sciences Liaison Librarian), Lydia Fletcher (STEM Liaison Librarian for Physical & Mathematical Sciences), Colleen Lyon (Scholarly Communications Librarian
Alicia Niwagaba, graduate research assistant at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), was awarded the Graduate Student Excellence Award by the Texas Digital Library (TDL). She accepted the award during the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries on May 17. Niwagaba is a recent graduate of the Master of Science in Information Systems (MSIS) program at the UT School of Information.
During her time at AILLA, Niwagaba has worked on developing an open educational curriculum designed to teach language documentation researchers how to organize and arrange their materials and metadata to facilitate their ingestion into a digital language archive like AILLA. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant BCS-1653380, Transforming Access and Archiving for Endangered Language Data through Exploratory Methodologies of Curation.
Niwagaba is a key member of the project team, which additionally consists of AILLA manager Susan Kung and AILLA language curator J. Ryan Sullivant. “Niwagaba contributes valuable insight gained from her training in libraries and digital archives to improve the quality of the curriculum content and to incorporate literature and viewpoints that would not have been considered otherwise,” says Kung. The curriculum she is helping to develop will be taught as a weeklong course at the Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang) at the University of Florida, June 18-22, 2018. Thereafter, the curriculum will be available as an open-access educational resource on AILLA’s website.
During her time at AILLA, Niwagaba developed a series of educational video tutorials about language archiving. These are designed to supplement the written curriculum or to stand alone as individual, shareable resources. Some of these engaging videos have already been widely shared throughout the language documentation community. This includes two that are available on YouTube: Language Metadata in AILLA and Filenaming.
AILLA manager Kung is grateful for Niwagaba’s contribution to the archive’s work, calling her “a critical member of AILLA’s curriculum development team.” Kung adds that Niwagaba “brings unique insight and perspective to the work that AILLA does. In fact, her efforts on this project have improved the level and convenience of service that AILLA is able to provide to our important stakeholders, the language documenters who entrust their precious, irreplaceable language materials to this repository. We are delighted that Alicia Niwagaba has won this award.”
Jessica Trelogan was brought in last year to fill the new position of Data Management Coordinator in order to build, maintain and enhance the data services deployed by the Libraries.
This February will be the one-year mark for me here at UTL. I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown! Looking back, though, I can see why: our Research Data Services unit has been busy. We’ve accomplished a lot in a year, including a website overhaul, a GIS pilot, a move to a new department, and a bunch of workshops and consultations.
Perhaps most exciting of all is the launch of the Texas Data Repository (TDR), which we are shouting loudly about this month. This long-anticipated new service has been the result of a huge amount of effort by our friends at Texas Digital Libraries (TDL), who have been working toward it since Fall of 2013. After initially identifying a need for a repository service to handle small to medium-sized research data, they settled on the open-source Dataverse platform, developed and used by Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and they decided to roll it out as a consortial service for TDL members. The Dataverse Implementation Working Group (DIWG) were hard at it for over a year, piloting, testing, assessing, and, at last, launching the service this month.
I am especially excited to be managing our local instance of it here at the Libraries. Thanks to the highly flexible Dataverse platform, each local institution that takes advantage of the service gets to decide how much control to give users. We’ve decided to give our users full control, meaning anyone from the UT-Austin community can log in with an EID, deposit data, and decide how much, with whom, and when to share it. I have high hopes that this new service, which complements our publication repository, Texas ScholarWorks, will help our research community comply with funder mandates for data sharing and archiving, get credit by facilitating reliable data citation, and promote open and reproducible research.
I look forward to getting the word out this spring about the Texas Data Repository, along with all our other research data-related services. One way we plan to do so is through a workshop series we’re launching called Data and Donuts. You’ll find us talking about research data every Friday this semester at 3pm at the Libraries (mostly at PCL). Oh yeah, plus there will be donuts!
The Longhorn Innovation Fund for Technology (LIFT) is a fund of approximately $500,000 that is awarded by the Research & Educational Technology Committee (R&E) to innovative academic technology projects that leverage technology to improve quality of instruction, create a differentiator for attracting higher caliber students to the University, or to create a competitive advantage to the University in attracting sponsored research.
The R&E Committee recently announced the call for proposals for funding in fiscal year 2012-2013. LIFT funding is intended to provide one-time seed money for innovative academic technology projects that leverage information technology in order to improve quality of instruction, create a differentiator for attracting higher caliber students to the University, or result in a competitive advantage to the University in attracting sponsored research. Awards are generally in the range of $75,000 – $125,000.
The University’s latest agreement with Dell provides the highest level of discounts via the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) contract for any UT Austin Dell purchase regardless of quantity.
Discounts are now based on the total annual volume of UT Austin purchases rather than the number of units being purchased on an individual order, making prices lower regardless of the number of units ordered or the time of year of the purchase.
Given the large installed base of Dell computers at the Libraries, this agreement will be very helpful as we manage the life cycle of our technology resources.
On April 2, Information Technology Services (ITS) launched their new “bulk storage” offering to our campus. This service is significant because it represents the first occurrence of a service that has been designed for campus departments and specifically architected for “high availability” and recoverability within a UT Austin data center.
ITS purchased a little over 1 pedabyte (PB) of storage – that’s 1,000 terabytes (TB) for use by departments and it is sure to become an essential resource for the library.
The Libraries is already one of the largest customers in the ITS data center and this service will be one that we evaluate carefully before making substantial storage purchases in the future.