Research Areas
- Library Technology Leadership
- Adaptive Leadership in Education
- Library Technology and IT as Socio-Technical Systems
- Digital Library & Digital Archive Systems and Operations
- Grant Writing and Research Administration
Project Areas
Grants
Revitalizing the Digital Library of the Caribbean – (cash: $2,000,000) This project team seeks to build and sustain the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) by reinforcing and strengthening the organization and its collections to allow dLOC’s community to flourish in the years to come. By intentionally collaborating with partners to address unmet needs, the project proposes to directly invest in the Caribbean institutions and people who comprise the dLOC network. The project will scaffold programmatic supports for executing core activities such as digitization and preservation workflows, copyright, and the ethical reuse of dLOC collections in teaching and research. (Project team: L. Taylor (PI), P. Collins (Co-PI), B. Keith (Co-PI), with T. Digby, F. Durant, C. Johnston, J. Nemmers, L.
Perry, K. Lemessy and L. Santamaria-Wheeler) (Start date: 4/01/2022; end date: 3/31/2026) Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – Public Knowledge Program
AgNIC Hosting Project – (cash: $25,000) This project team will host the Agriculture Network Information Collaborative (AgNIC) website (AgNIC.org) utilizing UF Lib Domains (through service provider Reclaim Hosting) and utilizing WordPress. UF will provide support for approved AgNIC users for editing, page creation, and file uploading. UF will maintain and cover costs for the domain name (URL: www.AgNIC.org). UF will maintain the SSL certificate to enable HTTPS. (Project team: V. Minson (PI), T. Digby (Co-PI) S. Stapleton (Co-PI), L. Taylor (Co-PI)) (Start date: 3/4/2022; end date: 3/3/2027) Agricultural Research Service; USDA – Research, Education, and Economics
Today’s Technology for Accessing Florida Newspapers (cash: $533,604; cost share: $123,822) The project team will produce the Florida Digital Newspaper Library portal (FDNL 3.0) to deliver free and open access to millions of pages of historical content previously only available in a UF digital collection. In response to feedback provided by the Division of Library Services Grant Review Panel for a Florida newspapers digitization LSTA proposal, the project team proposes to eliminate accessibility and usability barriers extant in the 2006 release of FDNL 1.0 through a fully functional, contemporary online portal. Today’s Technology seeks to serve local communities and individuals who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic who require electronic access to their civic histories that strengthen community ties. To achieve this, the project will: 1) completed FDNL 2.0 portal goes live, 2) select and digitize 1.5 million additional pages of Florida newspaper from microfilm to add to the existing 2.9 million digital newspaper pages at UF, 3) conduct usability testing on FDNL 2.0 as a precursor to a more comprehensive FDNL 3.0, 4) create online training modules for user enhanced access and features,5) develop and deliver guest lectures to Florida Library and Information Studies programs, 6) release FDNL3.0 portal, and 7) promote content and training to users statewide. (Project team: F. Durant (PI), C. Dinsmore (Co-PI), T. Digby (Co-PI), L. Spears (Co-PI), L. Taylor (Co-PI), with A. Buhler, L. Charnas, M. Daley, D. Durden, S. Ewing, D. Gordon, A. Hines, X. Ma, J. Munoz, L. Perry, C. Richmond) (start date: 10/01/2021; end date: 09/30/2022) Florida Division of Library & Information Services, American Rescue Plan Act
Middle Grade and Young Adult Books with Black, Indigenous People and People of Color: Where are they? (Round 2 Full Proposal) – (cash: $427,100; cost share $434,404) The project team, in partnership with Bates College and California State University-Fresno, with promotional support from state library associations, seek to enhance the discoverability of middle grade (MG) and young adult (YA) novels featuring Black and Indigenous people and People of Color (BIPOC) characters. The two primary goals of this project are to: 1) create a database that identifies not just who are included in MG/YA books featuring BIPOC characters, but how they are represented and 2) to create a freely available analysis tool that can easily be used by librarians to analyze the diversity of their own MG/YA novel collections. (Project team: R. Elrod (PI); Krista Aaronson, PhD (Co-PI, Bates College Diverse BookFinder Director), B. Kester(Co-PI), with Suzan Alteri (Anne Nixon Center Librarian) and , A. Asher, K. Bague, A. Baird, S. Birch, L. Campbell, T. Digby, A. Glenn, H. Hawley, J. Heckathorn, A. Hines, T. Hodge, C. Johnston, , Kenneth Kidd, PhD (Department of English), A. Lindell, X. Ma, G. Mahar, M. Meke, M. Nolan, L. Pang, L. Santamaria-Wheeler, L. Spears, and L. Taylor) (start date: 09/01/2021: end date: 08/31/2024) Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Leadership Grant, Community Catalyst Implementation
Academic Library Web Presence: Assessing Information Organization across Interdependent Webpages – (cash $4,858; cost-share: $36,269) This internal partnership project proposes to revise portions of the Smathers main website (site) information architecture design, to 1) include all user policies and core materials on the main site and, 2) have content accurately reflected within the information architecture. By conducting a deep analysis of the Access and Resources Sharing site, in particular, this action research and planning will result in 1) an improved information architecture for the main site, 2) improved information architecture for the ARS site, and, 3) Best Practices for use across all unit-level sites, an innovation that supports the Libraries’ decentralized website framework. (Project team: (L. Spears (PI), L. Pang (Co-PI), L. Taylor (Co-PI), with G. Clifton, M. Daley, T. Digby, P. Bickford Duane, and C. Shorey) (start date: 08/01/2021; end date: 07/31/2022) Strategic Opportunities Program
Creating Capacity: Meeting Campus-wide Digital Resource Access Needs During Covid-19 (cash: $39,031; cost share: $14,002) The project team seeks to extend the Libraries’ traditional lending role of print materials to the digital environment by which a majority of UF students and faculty will be conducting coursework for the near future. The team plans to acquire two high performance scanning packages that will upgrade the Libraries’ current digitization capacity to meet the demand by students and faculty for digital versions of essential library materials. This equipment will ensure that the Libraries’ staff can deliver resources for two programs – Course Reserves and Interlibrary loan/Document Delivery (ILL-DD) – that fundamentally serve the needs of students with affordable text books and digitized print documents that are expensive and currently maintained only in print formats. These materials include faculty-selected articles, book chapters, books reserved for courses, other documents required for course work, and other library-owned books. (Project team: L. Pang (PI), P. Collins (Co-PI), T. Digby (Co-PI); L. Spears (Co-PI), with J. Beserock, A. Monahan, J. Trasher, M. Tyler, and E. Wack) (start date: 10/1/2020; end date: 9/30/2021) Florida Division of Library and Information Services – CARES Act
Go Ahead, Bring a Pen: Virtual Classes in Special Collections (cash: $4,885; cost share: $20,394) The project team plans to acquire and test the efficacy of video and livestreaming equipment through the creation of virtual visits to special collections, where students and faculty can engage with the materials and curators in UF’s Special and Area Studies Collections Department (SASC) without having to leave their cups of coffee at the door. These video and multimedia segments will simultaneously fill an immediate need and will provide a platform for creative, rigorous, and diverse use of our collections in the library by communities who would not have the opportunity to walk through our doors. The acquisition of and experience with this technology would allow SASC to expand access to its collections in two key ways. First, it will enable live-streamed discussions around a single item or a collection of material of any size and format for classes that are unable to come to the Smathers Library. Second, it would allow us to create content for asynchronous instruction, both around solely our own material and exercises that put our physical materials in conversation with digitized collections, curators, and faculty around the world. Project team: PI: Neil Weijer, Co-PI: Sarah Coates and Todd Digby, Investigator: Hunter McDaniel) (start date: 7/1/2020; end date: 6/30/2021) Libraries Strategic Opportunities Program
Accessibility and Internationalization through Campus Beacons – UF Technology Fee Program – $30,198 – The purpose of this project is to enhance the accessibility of campus information, both for I those who have receptive language impairments (auditory or visual) and/or for those who speak languages other than English, using beacons and a beacon app. – Principal Investigator: Gillian Lord, Ph.D., Co-PI(s): Sara Russell Gonzalez, and Todd Digby – 9/1/17 – 8/31/18 – Project Site: https://ufind.clas.ufl.edu/
This is an article about the class we are partnering with for our grant funded beacon project.
ARL Position Description (PD) Bank Phase II – Association of Research Libraries – $15,000 – This project will create an automated retrieval interface with the ARL Job/Residency/Internship Listings API to collect data from user-submitted job postings. The data for each posting will be compared to existing material in the ARL PD Bank to avoid redundancy and be converted into a templatized PDF document. This PDF document will be associated with a record in the PD Bank with metadata from the posting that will support organizing, indexing, and searching functionality. The web-based user interface of the ARL PD Bank will be modified to ensure ease and effectiveness of use. The new interface will be tested by users and the functionality confirmed through their assessment. – Project team: B. Keith (PI), T. Digby (Co-PI), with B. Smith and L. Taylor – 1/30/2018 – 7/30/2018