The University of North Texas Libraries' Dean's Innovation Grant, formerly known as the Green Light To Greatness Award, provides funding to research and projects wi

The completely redesigned user interface of The Portal to Texas History has encouraged historians, genealogists, and everyday users to research their individual areas of interests. Internal user testing continues to uncover insights on how users interact with the Portal's vast catalog of public records, historical documents and artifacts.

Supporting sustainable practices is an important goal of the university as outlined in its mission statement and strategic planning. As our Faculty Delivery Service responds to greater demand, we are becoming more aware of the environmental impact our delivery materials (plastic poly mailers) have because they are neither recyclable nor reusable. Faculty members have expressed concerns about the long-tenn use of these materials, and some have opted out of using the service as a result.

African American male students have the highest attrition rate. In Fall 2017, a new living/learning community comprised of freshmen males will meet for a one-hour course focused on the African American experience in the United States examined through the lens of African American music.

Growing expectation for digitized archival content means institutions must balance needs for access with quality metadata and embracing minimal description. For the NBC 5/KXAS television news collection, "minimal" description takes the form of keywords. Because employees have different areas of expertise and are not guided by a controlled vocabulary, description may reflect individual views of the material and its potential uses rather than metadata that is useful to other user groups.

Escape to the Library: A Library Learning Escape Room Experience was a successful and popular option during First Flight in 2016 that incorporated learning objectives tied to the ACRL Framework into a fun, immersive puzzle-solving experience.

The proposed project involves hosting an ACRL licensed workshop on “Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy” aimed at developing collaborations and learning experiences for students, faculty, and staff interested in improving competencies in these areas or integrating them into their teaching or research.

Brian Elliot is a Ph.D. Student and Teaching Fellow with the History Department at the University of North Texas. Brian’s research focuses on slavery during the Civil War, and the legacy of former slaves as “Black Confederates.” Brian’s published materials include his Master’s thesis “Peculiar Pairings: Texas Confederates and their Black Body Servants," as well as a number of published book reviews. Brian has presented his research at several conferences, including at the Society for Military History, and the Southwest Social Science Association, and has given informal talks on his research and the utility of digital resources in historical research.

Heather Sinclair has a background in professional midwifery and activism and received her Ph.D. in history in 2016 from the University of Texas at El Paso.  Her dissertation is entitled "Birth City: Race and Violence in the History of Childbirth and Midwifery in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Borderlands, 1907-2013."  She is currently a lecturer in history and women’s studies at the University of Texas at El Paso.  She received a B.A. in history and certificate in women’s studies from Duke University.

Robin Roe is a doctoral candidate at Texas A&M University and received her BA and MA in History from Texas A&M University. Her dissertation examines how media used weather-related natural disasters in Texas and the Southwest border region in the early Twentieth Century to manipulate public perceptions of race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, and class, and how some of those victims contested that manipulation. She is a veteran of the U. S. Air Force and has worked as a copy editor and in the computer industry before beginning her graduate work. She is particularly interested in the potential of digital humanities for historical research.