The University of Texas Libraries 2021 Year in Review

Game-changing innovations that use artificial intelligence (AI) tools are at the heart of a collaborative project led by LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections at The University of Texas at Austin, the Digital Humanities Hub at Lancaster University, and Liverpool John Moores University. “Unlocking the Colonial Archive: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Indigenous and Spanish American Historical Collections” is a project that will transform “unreadable” digitized Indigenous and Spanish colonial archives into data that will be accessible to a broad spectrum of researchers and the public.

The Libraries joined a nationwide effort to correct reference terminology that is outdated and often offensive. The "Change the Subject" movement started in 2014 when students and librarians at Dartmouth College initiated a collaboration with the Association (ALA) and the Library of Congress (LC) to formally change LC subject headings that contain the terms “illegal aliens” and replace them with terms that recognize the humanity of migrants and are less racially insensitive. 

Subject specialists embarked on a proactive strategy to diversify Libraries’ collections in an effort to address past inequities in collections practices. One of the first areas of focus was in expanding Black Lives Matter materials.

The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection marked its centenary in 2021 and continued into the new year, with a bevy of activity, including exhibitions, events and the launch of a podcast. 

The University of Texas Libraries and a consortium of partner institutions have completed a multi-year project to update the web portal for Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO), the principal reference site for discovering the contents of special collections and archives across the state of Texas.

The Libraries initiate the inaugural cohort in the Open Education Fellows pilot program. A competitive application process awarded three Open Education Fellows who will convert their courses to zero-cost required materials through the adoption of existing open educational resources (OER) and one team of Open Education Fellows who will develop their own OER to serve students at UT and beyond.

The online portal for the Human Rights Documentation Initiative – a collaborative archival project aimed at preserving and promoting the use of fragile human rights records from around the world established in 2008 – has received a long-overdue upgrade to provide enhanced access to materials contained within the project's archive.

The Libraries expanded a partnership with Cambridge University Press that enhanced global open access to research published by authors and researchers across the UT System in a “Read & Publish” agreement, which provides system-wide institutional access to all Cambridge University Press journals, and offsets the costs of open access publishing of all works authored by University of Texas experts.