News & Updates

The University of North Texas Libraries selected three Level 3 PDI Fellows—Ana Krahmer, Maristella Feustle, and William Hicks—for one-month research buyouts between September 2026 and June 2027. Their research projects focus on sustaining state and national digital newspaper preservation programs, building geolocated historical and socio-economic research databases, and creating immersive visual archival recordings of culturally historic sites in preparation for the Texas 2036 Bicentennial.

University Libraries at CU Boulder awarded Level 3 follow-on funding to its four collaborative research teams to further advance their projects through June 2027. The additional support covers student assistants, data gathering, interview incentives, conference travel, and publication fees to produce scholarly deliverables including manuscripts, presentations, and datasets.

Virginia Tech University Libraries completed the selection of four Level 3 PDI Fellows across two rounds in April and July 2026, providing dedicated research time to pursue focused scholarly work and collaborative research initiatives.

The University of North Texas Libraries selected six Level 2 projects for FY2027 funding under the University Libraries Research and Innovation Grants (ULRIG) program. Led by Morgan Gieringer, Amanda Zerangue, Chassidy Miles, Christa Hiemann, Meranda Roy, and Tracy Brewster, the funded projects explore a library book lab feasibility study, AI literacy grounded theory analysis, engineering practice programs, music library needs analysis, AI-supported OER development, and open access workflow agility.

Presentations from Virginia Tech’s 2024 seed grant projects are now in the Showcases, covering oral histories with Vietnam War veterans, racial covenants in Chicago suburbs, followership collections, research software engineering, a gene expression atlas for Prader-Willi syndrome, and more. Explore them on the Projects page.

This cohort of the CU Boulder Microgrant Showcase features four projects and supporting presentation decks, covering archival metadata for marigram collections, representation of comics in academic libraries, letterpress learning, and a collaborative materials library. Explore them on the Projects page.

The Joint PDI Project Showcases page is now live! This new hub shares collaborative research project outcomes and presentation decks from participating universities. Visit the Projects page to view the projects.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is reinstating the Joint PDI project (RE-254915-OLS-23) and extending the project period to July 31, 2027. Virginia Tech, the University of North Texas, and the University of Colorado Boulder will continue to award collaborative research seed grants, support PDI Fellows, and share training resources and project outcomes with the library community.

The Joint PDI project team presented "Cultivating Collaborative Library Scholars: A Multi-Institutional Professional Development Initiative" at the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Spring 2025 Membership Meeting in Milwaukee, WI. Presenters Yinlin Chen (Virginia Tech), Jamie Wittenberg (CU Boulder), Martin Klein (Los Alamos National Laboratory), and Zhiwu Xie (UC Riverside) shared the project's three-tiered professional development model, implementation strategies, and collaborative research outcomes.

The Joint PDI project website is now live! This initial version provides information about the project vision, the three-level participation program (Learning, Practicum, and Fellowship), and participating partner libraries. The site will serve as a central hub for training resources, project showcases, and updates as we continue to expand the Joint PDI program.

The Joint Professional Development Institute (Joint PDI) to Cultivate Collaborative Library Scholars project launches with support from the IMLS (RE-254915-OLS-23). This collaborative effort between Virginia Tech, University of North Texas, University of Colorado Boulder, Los Alamos National Lab, and University of California Riverside aims to support and champion active, interdisciplinary research collaborations among academic and research library staff.