News: 2025 - University Libraries

Willis Library building with green geometric design and text

Dean's Innovation Grant 2025

The University of North Texas Libraries’ Dean’s Innovation Grant, provides funding to research and projects within the UNT Libraries. The University of North Texas Libraries’ Dean’s Innovation Grant, provides funding to research and projects within the UNT Libraries that promote scholarship and contribute to the gathering of knowledge that helps improve our libraries, our university, and the community. Dean’s Innovation Grant 2025 Awardees Live D&D @ UNT Lindsay Duke, Diane Robson, Steven Guerrero, Dakota Scott, Jenn Washburn Project Description: The Media Library will host a live performance of Dungeons & Dragons with a student cast lead by Lindsay Duke as Dungeon Master. This will be performed in front of a live audience and streamed via the Media Library Discord server. The event will be held on October 30th in the Lyceum. The objective will be to expand our engagement with the student population, connect with the role-playing community on campus, and showcase the Media Library’s Role-Playing guides and gaming collections. Texas Historic American Buildings Project: Research and Praxis Mark Phillips Project Description: The Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) are administered by the National Park Service to document the historic sites and structures across the United States through the creation of measured drawings, large-format photographs, and historical reports. To better understand the history of the HDP, its role in documenting the built environment in the state of Texas, and to develop greater insight into the technical requirements of these programs to inform future projects, I propose this two-stage project involving a research stage and a praxis stage to assist in documenting the built environment in Texas according to the guidelines of the HDP. Library on the Go: A Pop-up Library Initiative Abby Stovall, Briana Knox, Madison Brents, Jo Monahan Project Description: Create a pop-up library kit that can be reserved and utilized by librarians and staff within the University of North Texas Libraries. This kit will incorporate aspects of a traditional library services desk, but mobile, so that pop-up events are recognizable as a library point-of-service. After researching, purchasing, and assembling the kit, project members would pilot various pop-up events in different places on campus with different purposes and assemble a Library Guide with tips and ideas for library employees to be inspired to host their own Pop-Up Library. RapidMiner Karen Harker, Sephra Byrne, Carol Hargis, Jen Rowe, Frank Gosnell, Garrett Rumohr, Deborah Caldwell Project Description: The objective of this project is to for UNT Libraries staff to gain experience in modeling a variety of data with flatter learning curve than traditional programming languages like Python and R. The purpose of gaining this experience is to improve library resources, services, and processes through the use of data modeling. Key projects include predicting student outcomes in First Year Writing II courses for those who did and did not receive library instruction, predicting users and non-users of library resources and services, and predicting use and non-usage of journals. Assessment of the Representation of Libraries’ Juvenile Collection Sephra Byrne, Sian Brannon, Todd Enoch, Stacey Wolf, Jo Monahan, Greg Hardin, Marcia McIntosh, Sarah Lynn Fisher Project Description: We aim to establish a benchmark of representation of voices and characters within the UNT Libraries’ Juvenile Collection so that pre-service teachers and library science students will assured of access to high-quality literature and books that reflect the communities they will be serving. LIMIT Digital Streaming Maristella Feustle, Leah De Leon Project Description: The proposed project entails connecting directly with rights holders of local music items in UNT’s LIMIT Collection to develop a robust digital streaming catalog. The intended goal is to provide local, independent musicians with an online platform for their music, and the funds would allow the library to provide an incentive of a non-exclusive licensing deal. The primary stakeholders of this project are the rights holders, the UNT Music Library, as well as the broader local/independent music community of Texas and researchers studying music scenes and music collection preservation tactics.

Posted: 02/12/2025

photos of Dr. Mónica Salazar and Dr. Layla Seale

Spring 2025 Coursework Development Grant

Special Collections is pleased to announce the recipients of the Coursework Development Grant for the Spring 2025 semester. Supported by the Toulouse Archival Research Program Endowment, the grant was established in 2019 to partner with faculty at UNT to develop assignments for courses that will utilize collections and materials held by Special Collections. Recipients of the grant are awarded $500 in research and professional development funding. Spring 2025 Special Collections Coursework Development Grant Special Collections is pleased to announce the recipients of the Coursework Development Grant for the Spring 2025 semester. Supported by the Toulouse Archival Research Program Endowment, the grant was established in 2019 to partner with faculty at UNT to develop assignments for courses that will utilize collections and materials held by Special Collections. Recipients of the grant are awarded $500 in research and professional development funding. The Spring 2025 winners are: Dr. Mónica Salazar, Senior Lecturer, Department of Art History Dr. Salazar is a Senior Lecturer in the department of Art History at the University of North Texas, where she teaches courses in postmodernism, theories of contemporary art, as well as the history of photography and modern and contemporary Latin American art. Her research considers questions regarding Mexico’s entrance into the globalized world order and the consequences this has for the visual arts. Students in her upper-level undergraduate History of Photography course will study holdings in the Byrd Williams Family Photography Collection as inspiration for a creative self-portrait assignment. Dr. Layla Seale, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Art History Dr. Seale is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at UNT, specializing in Medieval Art. Her research analyzes how medieval images of demons reveal a broad spectrum of religious and cultural ideologies and anxieties. Recently, her work on demons and labor, titled “Work is Hell: Demon Laborers in Late Medieval Art,” was published in Different Visions, a peer-reviewed, open access journal devoted to progressive art history scholarship. Undergraduate students in her art history course, Illuminating the Middle Ages: The Art of Medieval Manuscript, will analyze UNT Special Collection’s rich collection of medieval manuscript leaves and fragments during multiple visits, and submit written responses explaining their reactions to the materiality of these objects with the option of submitting a creative assignment replicating the techniques they analyzed. During individual visits, students will also consult the robust collection of illuminated manuscript facsimiles. Congratulations, Dr. Salazar and Dr. Seale! UNT Special Collections is excited to work with you and your students this semester!

Posted: 02/06/2025

photograph of Gene Forst; Three Questions

Three Questions with Gene Forst

Three Questions is an initiative to share the value that our faculty, students, and external patrons derive from using the Portal to Texas History at UNT Libraries. Three Questions is an initiative to share the value that our faculty, students, and external patrons derive from using the Portal to Texas History at UNT Libraries. 1. How important is the Portal in your teaching, learning or research? The Portal to Texas History, especially the Texas newspapers collection, is invaluable for my research in mid to late 19th century Texas history. My research interests include alternative Texas political parties of the 1870s and 1880s, the many attempts to create statewide labor organizations in the 1880s and 1890s and different tries to develop a socialist future for the state. The Portal’s newspapers provide a wide variety of views and opinions on these topics from different regions of Texas. Because most newspapers of the period had short lives or ownership and editors constantly changed, the Portal’s newspaper directories and town directories are very helpful. 2. How has the Portal changed the way you approach your research, teaching or learning? Newspapers of the period relied on their exchanges with other papers. They printed items from those papers to fill space in their own paper. Hence, with the number of papers available in the Portal you can piece together the views of papers no longer extant. Also, perhaps to fill space, most papers printed verbatim speeches, letters and minutes of innumerable citizen mass meetings without the filtering of a third party. As more papers are added to the Portal, new information can arise that could modify a prior conclusion. So, in a sense, your research is never complete. 3. What do you want others to know about your research, teaching or learning? Research in the Portal can be addictively entertaining. You can find yourself tracking stories and people that lead you far from your original intent. The Portal to Texas History is UNT’s signal contribution to scholarship across Texas and beyond. It should be promoted and bragged on by the UNT academic community. Gene Forst is retired and lives in Denton, Texas.

Posted: 01/16/2025

Artist Lecture: Kelli Connell

Posted: 01/06/2025

photograph of Sam Haynes; Three Questions

Three Questions with Sam Haynes

Dr. Sam Haynes is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, and is the Director of the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies. Three Questions is an initiative to share the value that our faculty, students, and external patrons derive from using the Portal to Texas History at UNT Libraries. 1. How important is the Portal in your teaching, learning or research? As a Texas historian, I have been a regular — and often daily — visitor to the site since it first went online twenty years ago. My own area of research is the 19th century, and I have come to rely heavily on the Portal, and particularly its digital newspaper collection. Combing through old newspapers used to be an incredibly arduous and time-consuming process, requiring countless hours at archives or on microfilm machines. By collecting and digitizing newspapers from across the state, the Portal is nothing less than an indispensable resource for scholars of Texas history using print media in their research. What’s more, the Portal is much more user-friendly than other digital newspaper sites, one that students find accessible as well. 2. How has the Portal changed the way you approach your research, teaching or learning? As a pedagogical tool, the Portal is essential for anyone teaching Texas history at the college level. I offer a research course at UT Arlington for undergraduate history majors, and last year students were tasked with writing an in-depth paper on a particular Texas monument. Some chose one of the many Confederate veterans’ memorials erected in towns and cities in the early 20th century, while others examined statues built to celebrate the state’s centennial anniversary in 1936. All these construction projects received considerable attention in the local press, so the Portal’s digital newspaper collection was invaluable, allowing students to get a real sense of what each monument meant to their respective communities when they were being built. Several told me that researching local newspapers via the Portal was their favorite part of the course. 3. What do you want others to know about your research, teaching or learning? In 2015 I began work on a digital humanities project, Texas in Turmoil: Interethnic Violence, 1821-1879, which seeks to map sites of conflict in Texas from the Mexican republic to the end of the so-called Indian Wars. Texas was one of the most ethnically diverse regions in North America during much of this period, and this project has enabled me, and I hope will enable other historians, to better understand how the many peoples of Texas fought for land, resources and power. In my research I have drawn from historical monographs, local county histories, archival materials at the Texas State Library and the National Archives, and, of course, the Portal’s newspaper collection. When complete, the Texas in Turmoil project will have mapped more than 3,000 sites of conflict in nineteenth century Texas involving Anglo-Americans, Native Americans, Hispano Americans, and those of African descent. I am hopeful that the website will provide scholars and teachers with new ways to understand and visualize the interethnic and interracial struggles that represent such a conspicuous and protracted feature of the state’s early modern past.

Posted: 01/06/2025