Closing Session – ETD Leadership Awards Ceremony & Future Directions. USETDA 2025.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all of you. Uh I'm professor Romesh uh from India and also the chair of the NLT conference committee. Welcome you to this closing session of wonderful conference which is going to be conclude today. Uh in this closing session we have two very very important items uh to be presented. Uh the first one is ETD awards. uh you all know that from since inception of ETD NDLTD we have been giving uh two very important awards to uh students and certain individuals. U uh the first one ETD uh innovation innovative ETD awards uh which is generally given to a student for a good quality work or creative uh dissertation uh by using latest technologies. And the second award is ETD leadership award which is given to uh an individual like an academician researcher who has contributed significantly in the field of ETDs. uh so in uh nominations were invited unfortunately we didn't get any nomination for innovative BTD awards but uh our award committee has decided to honor uh uh some of the uh individuals who have contributed uh in this category uh we have uh one award to be given. So to present the award and to also uh highlight the importance of these awards and uh other issues uh I invite uh professor Edward Fox uh who is the chair and the executive director of NLT board uh to present the award. Uh over to you sir. Thank you, Romesh. Um, so it's my great honor to lead us in two activities. One of them is this awards ceremony. Um, and I'm thrilled to announce that Janette Wright is the 2025 NDLTD leadership award winner. Um, it's wonderful to have her joining us from the other side of the world, from where I am. Um, and I'd like to turn this over to her who's going to give us a a quick talk about that. And then when that's done, we'll be hearing from Dr. Nabi Hassan about exciting plans for next year. Well, thank you both Romesh and Ed. I want to thank the members of NDLTD for your collegial support over the past five years and thank you for the nomination and recognition of my work on behalf of NDLT and the wider open scholarship movement. I've had a long and varied career in libraries and the scholarly publishing field and not a lot of that has been directly involved with ETDs, but certainly in recent times it has. But throughout my career, I've advocated for more open and accessible pathways to knowledge because I believe it's an important contributor to democracy. And in my role as dean of libraries at the United Arab Emirates University in Abu Dhabi, Prashant Pandi contacted me to invite me on behalf of the board to host the ETD 2020. And as the planning for this was proceeding very well in 2019, I was very fortunate to attend ETD 2019 in Porto and met many colleagues from around the world in person. And I really hope that in-person conferences will reemerge over time. However, we found that by the beginning of 2020, the annual symposium was not going to attract inerson participants because of the pandemic restrictions. And so, we organized a much smaller online symposium. And then um at the same time Prashant Pandi triggered and initiated the journal for ETD and that's continued to capture the contributions to the ETD's annual conference. Following the ETD 2020, my colleagues at UAEU, Miriam Mal Jabri and Amina Itani offered to host the ETD 2021 to try and make up for what was missing in 2020. And it was actually included as part of expo 2020 in Dubai, attended by senior UAE government officials and really capably managed by Mariam and Amina and supported by the chair of NT ND Ltd's conference committee Dr. Romesh Gao. So since 2019, I've served as chair of the nominations committee and I will uh end my term on the board at the end of this year. I particularly want to thank Prashant Pandandy, Roxan Missingham, a colleague in Australia, Ireina and Daisy for your support on the um nominations committee. And I'd also like to mention that Tony Kanye Leiti who was awarded this in 2018 was a major driver for um access to ETDs throughout Australia. So much so that the Australian digital thesis project turned into a national project. So that any thesis or dissertation in Australia is now available through the national libraries trove movement. So I feel very honored to have been uh to join um an honor list including Tony. I especially want to thank Professor Ed Fox for his guidance over this past five years and his work on NDLTD over many years. But I cannot accept this award without thanking Renee and Nester who's tirelessly answered emails, followed up queries, and corrected my errors. So I'm honored to have been recognized with this award and really encouraged that the work to make thesis and dissertations available to scholars worldwide is going to continue with an invigorated and possibly merged team at NDLTD and US ETDA. So congratulations on ETD 2025. The the sections that I've participated in have been very interesting and rewarding. So thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Please join me in congratulating Janette for many years of wonderful service. >> Thank you >> and for a very eloquent and gracious talk. Thank you. Yes, thank you. >> Okay. Um, so going into the future, we're fortunate to have Dr. Nabi Hassan joining us. Um, and I'll turn the floor over to him to tell us about the future. >> Sir, before that uh if I can say something. Uh, >> yes, please. See uh we have been giving awards to various people but the most deserving person in this category is professor Edward Fox because he is the one who pioneered and who contributed significantly. So in the next conference in India we would like to honor you with lifetime achievement award in ETD. So we request your present in the New Delhi in the next conference so we can have honor of honoring you uh in physical in person at IIT New Delhi. That's I'm taking liberty from Navi. So over to Navi now. Uh thank you very much uh uh uh and TD board on the honorable member for giving me the opportunity to uh welcome you all uh to the proposed uh 2026 ETD conference. In fact uh when uh professor Amaze God in the cap city as university librarian hosted this uh ETD 2015 we were very excited and we are just like opposite to road. I mean his university and my university are like just across road and he involved me in uh the whole conference process. So I was very excited and uh uh he delivered uh a very great event and in India we still prefer having uh uh in-person events. Uh so I think uh with this background I would like to like share that this is going to be an uh in-person event and it is in Delhi. So you will have all the uh facilities and we have experienced people. I have a team of 40 dedicated professionals in my central library team equally [clears throat] qualified uh who have different type of experiences and uh October being a good month for like weather wise uh because uh in uh September we still have humidity and the temperature is close to 36 37. So October will be good and there is no pollution as well. So I think it is the good time for all of you to like experience this place. So few of these slides uh regarding uh what we have been doing uh so I have organized many events especially as a co-chair of the special library association annual conference. uh we hosted last conference in Pittsburgh and uh before that I was also co-chair and hosted a conference in University of Rhode Island and uh like we have been doing it and one of the biggest event that we hosted in person was uh KEDL uh which was in 2019. So I think uh the purpose of showing this slide is just that we have enough capabilities and experience to like uh welcome you in uh Delhi. Uh and I would request all of you to please uh keep marked your calendar so that we can request you uh to serve you in Delhi in person. So as far as my institution is concerned uh we are ranked one in QS ranking uh from India. It is a federal government institution and we have 13,000 students and 700 faculty members. So we have a uh good campus and all the talented staff and people. Our IT Delhi Abu Dhabi campus is very popular. We are offering BTech, Mank, PhD as well and we have other campuses as well. But this is planned in IT Delhi in Delhi campus. As far as infrastructure is concerned, uh we have great modern uh lecture halls, auditoriums and other state-of-the-art facilities. We have very good sports and recreation facilities. So that during your stay uh there in IIT Dhi uh we are able to offer you other facilities as well and depending upon the uh uh like expected audience we can book the uh conference hall accordingly. So I will be in touch with uh professor Romesh God like what what should be the size of the uh uh space uh which may be required for the conference and of course Delhi is well connected uh you have direct flight with almost all the cities of the world non-stop flight to all the cities in US as well whether it is Chicago, New York, Washington, Los Angeles or all the city are directly connected uh non-stop flight rides. These are some of the facilities like uh I'm proposing this uh seminar hall which has a capacity of around 350 people. Uh if we are going to host about 120 people, this could be another space and my own library building. This is my library building, central library building. It also has a space which can offer uh seating for 70 80 people. And all these buildings are adjoining. they are just connected and we have another hall which can host up to uh 1,400 people. So we have different type of uh like spaces conference spaces depending upon our expected audience we can plan accordingly. So of course all the hotels and guest houses are available in Delhi being Delhi as a capital city and the government of India has developed a new uh area known as Aeros city which is close to airport and in that proximity we have all the international hotels and luckily IT Delhi is very close to uh airport uh we have a signal free uh road uh to airport from IT Delhi just 10 kilometer. So just in 15 minute 10 15 minute you can reach to airport as well. And of course India is famous for historical and other places. So Delhi itself is very popular. Uh you have Kottominar, you have storm which was visited by President Obama as well last time when he was the president. We have red fort, we have other other places like India gate, Rajput, Lotus temper, Jamajit, old fort etc. So these are some of the buildings which are there in Delhi. But another important thing is that you have uh accessibility to other nearby places as well. For example, Taj Mahel is one of the seven wonders of India world and you can reach to Taj Mahel in just 2 hours by train or by road and Jaipur is not away. Jaipur is also close to now just 3 to 4 hours journey because the roads are better but these places are connected by fast trains as well. So I think you can explore these places which are close to Delhi apart from like other important modern places in Delhi. So overall it offers really heritage buildings, modern buildings, shopping and the food is very uh good. Uh if you are a foodie you can enjoy uh nonvege or veg cuisines as well. As far as the partners are concerned, since I have a very good team of 40 dedicated professionals and Dr. Romesh God is there in Delhi to help us because he has lot of experience. So I think we may not be required additional official partners. We would be needing guidance from people like Dr. Romesh Gore and his uh ex team in the Javaru University. So we see seek support from those people's you can uh click sometime this video few few minutes video or the central library video uh which can help you understand uh uh what type of facilities we can offer or what we are as far as uh like uh having ETD 2026 in Delhi is concerned. This is my few of the members of my team. Just a couple of days back uh there was an event and this photograph was taken. These are the senior people like university assistant lab or university deputy librarian and these are other young people which are holding other important library positions. So with this I would like to thank you all and I would like to uh welcome you to Delhi and I I assure you that I will take very care good care of all of you and we are very good good host as far as our Indian traditions cultures are concerned and I think with our experience and with in in the guidance of professor Romesh God we will deliver a very good amazing product. Thank you very much for the opportunity. >> Thank you so much, Na'vi. >> Thank Thank you. Thank you. And and let me turn it back to John Hagen to close the rest of the event. >> Oh, [snorts] thank you so much, Ed. Uh, so I'm just going to briefly share our screen here. Oops. Let's sit here. So, first of all, I just wanted to put the pitch out for the US ETDA 2026 conference. Uh, if anyone is interested can you can contact us in early January of 2026 and uh we look forward to um creating some sort of interesting venue whether it be in person we hope or uh virtual like we did this year or maybe we'll just come and join you in Delhi after all. [laughter] So, but I really enjoyed the collaboration with this um joint conference. And then um finally, I certainly would like to thank our sponsors with whom we could not have made this event possible. Um the NDELT um ProQuest of Claraveate um [clears throat] George Mason University, Grad Works online from Brigham Young University, Renaissance Scholar Communications, and certainly the Texas Digital Library. So, thank you all for making this a wonderful event. Ed, any parting comments or remsh? Ed, I think you're >> it's wonderful to it's wonderful to have so many people contributing to this exciting event. The uh recordings will be made available in uh the USDA site in due time after we process in a little bit. Um, as the uh, executive editor for the journal of electronic dissitations, I encourage everyone to contribute uh, presentations um, in written form that elaborate on what they've been presenting at the conference. Hopefully, we'll have a wonderful issue that comes out of this and thank all the people who are helping with that. I especially want to thank um, Janette Wright and Nabi Hassan for these wonderful, inspiring presentations. um John and Terry and others from USCDA for uh running this wonderful event and and last of all Renee Nester for uh spending two days in my cold office to uh record and and help keep everything going as well as keep us on track for everything else. Thank you. So that's uh uh anything else John would like to uh or Terry would like to say any last word? Uh >> I'll just bid everyone a good evening and thank you for being patient and enduring this amazing conference. And as Ed mentioned um we will make the um videos available on the US ETDA YouTube channel um hopefully sooner sooner than later. We have a little editing ahead of us, but we will um promptly start putting those videos out there for the for your consumption. Thank you so much for joining us. >> John, are the presentations going to be made available too? >> Oh yes, let me mention the um proceedings. We will um send out an announcement once we have aggregated the um PowerPoint presentations and so forth and we'll um create a proceeding space. We have several venues in mind um not only not only with the USDA but the NDL today has an archive and u the Texas uh University of North Texas I think also has given us an offer here. So we'll have multiple places to find our um our wonderful >> just let us know when they're available. >> Um yes we will certainly do that probably within the coming week we can um make some arrangements here to send an announcement out. So thank you Anna for reminding us. I definitely want to thank everyone who's been from other parts of the world where people have gotten up early in the morning, been up through the middle of the night and so on. So, um this is a truly international activity and lots of sacrifice went into making all this a success. >> Thank you. >> So, uh >> thank you so much. >> That's all from closing ceremony. I join my colleague Dr. Navi Hassan inviting you all and look forward to seeing you all in New Delhi. We can assure you the best of comfort and uh just like what we did in 2015. We'll be happy to uh make you more comfortable this time because now in last 10 years India has immersed uh one of the uh very welldeveloped economy and we have excellent facilities and infrastructure. you will truly enjoy the beauty of Delhi with all metro connectivity everything uh it will be a much more uh lovely experience in in comparison to to 2015. So I request all of you to come and uh I think with these words I thanks John for giving me this opportunity to be part of this conference and entire team I express my sincere thanks on Vap conference committee of NLTD wonderful conference and we look forward to more partnership and more collaboration in future. With this I uh close it here uh and look forward to seeing you all in October 2026 in Delhi. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you everyone. >> Thank you. >> Take care. >> Until next time. >> Yeah. Hopefully soon we did. Bye.