From Salwa Ismail, Chair of DSpace Leadership Group on behalf of the DSpace Leadership Group
Texas Digital Library has kindly offered to host the next DSpace North American User Group Meeting in Austin, TX. This is a great opportunity for the North American DSpace community to meet again after the successful event hosted at and by Georgetown University Library in Washington DC in August 2017. However, due to certain discriminatory laws in Texas, some U.S. states restrict travel to Texas. Hence, the DSpace Leadership Group, with the full support of TDL, has decided to reach out to the DSpace community to see if there were any other organizations who would be able to host the event.
The host institution is responsible for the logistics (rooms, schedule/agenda, etc.) and registration. They are also responsible for meals/snacks (if doable). Past events have kept registration very minimal at under $50 and have been around 1.5 days. While there is no preference for a date, it is preferred that the meeting is hosted during a time that does not overlap with another conference. If there is an interest from another institution, the hosts of the past events would be happy to answer any questions. Please note that while this is not a DuraSpace sponsored event, DuraSpace helps the event by promoting it and sending its staff to this event to attend/present the sessions.
In the event that we are unfortunately unable to garner interest from any other institution, the TDL consortium will proceed with hosting it and the event will be promoted with statements of inclusion that the university system currently uses for other events along with the DuraSpace Code of Conduct.
We look forward to hearing from the DSpace community.