Library News

"Air America: Upholding the Airmen's Bond"
Symposium fills UT Dallas Conference Center

The public filled the Conference Center for the UTD-CIA symposium
about Air America rescues in Laos

On April 18, 2009 the University of Texas at Dallas and the Central Intelligence Agency held a special symposium titled "Air America: Upholding the Airmen's Bond." The university's Conference Center was filled with dignitaries from Air America, UT Dallas and the CIA along with guests from the public.

During the Vietnam War, AirAmerica (AAM), a secretly-owned air proprietary of the CIA, was the agency's indispensable instrument for clandestine missions. While some of its work may never be publicly acknowledged, much of AAM's critical role in wartime rescue missions is now being told. The symposium provided a forum for the release of thousands of pages of heretofore unavailable documents on AAM's relationship with the CIA. It also brought together AAM veterans with some of the men they rescued, and the CIA "customers" who often placed their lives and missions in the hands of the once-secret proprietary.

AAM crews were not required to monitor military emergency radio calls, fly to the location of military personnel in distress, or place their lives at risk of enemy ground-fire and possible capture. They received no extra compensation for rescue work and sometimes lost wages for their efforts. However, in their flying community it was enough to know that a downed aviator was in trouble and that airmen should always come to the aid of other airmen. It was simply the Airmen's Bond.

On the heels of the symposium, McDermott Library began preparing to receive copies of approximately 10,000 pages of declassified documents on Air America which will become part of the university's History of Aviation Collection.

Lima Site 85 survior John Daniel

Air America pilots Ed Adams and Marius Burke

Tim Castle, Ph.D, of the CIA at far right directs a panel
of rescue personnel and those they rescued in Laos

Craig W. Duehring, a former 'Raven' pilot in Southeast Asia who is now the
Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs,
makes the keynote address at the symposium.

UT Dallas Dean of Libraries Larry D. Sall, left, presents a
"Special Commendation" to Al Tarasuik and Joe Lambert
of the Central Intelligence Agency on behalf of UT Dallas.
The commendation is signed by both Sall
and UT Dallas President David Daniel.

Library seeks to share the wealth
through Texas Digital Library
and cutting edge technology

Working with the Texas Digital Library (TDL) staff in Austin, McDermott Library at The University of Texas at Dallas has launched a digital forum on its Web site to preserve the university’s intellectual output.
Treasures @ UT Dallas debuted in December as a work in progress. It began with digital images already processed in the History of Aviation Collection located in the library’s Special Collections. Also listed are digital versions of library publications. The archive has the added capacity to offer digital documents, video and audio files.  Users can search by file name or by collection. (Shown above is a flag carried on the Apollo 12 mission to the moon in 1969 and signed by astronaut Alan L. Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon's surface, and the Medal of Honor presented to James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle by President Franklyn D. Roosevelt after the airman's daring raid over Tokyo, Japan in April 1942).
The TDL is an open-source project used by Texas Research Libraries as a forum for sharing research throughout Texas and with others around the world. Copyrighted materials can be included with permission of the copyright holder.
“It is our goal to enable our UTD community of faculty, staff and students to share their knowledge with one another online,” said Dean of Libraries Larry D. Sall, Ph.D. “We are interested in obtaining items from our schools to showcase on this special site for years to come.”
The library recently added a streaming podcast presented by the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences that addressed the current financial crisis. Another just added is a presentation by Emily A. Tobey, Ph.D. of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Another being prepared for the site is a presentation by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge sponsored by the School of Management.
The McDermott Library committee worked closely for nearly a year with the TDL staff, particularly the programmers, to build the infrastructure. The site was configured and customized for launch on Dec. 13.
McDermott Library programmers Faizur Rahman, Ph.D., and Daud Abdullah used their knowledge of DSpace, a cutting-edge technology originally developed by MIT and HP researchers, and Manakin to build the server with the oversight of Jean Vik, associate library director of operating systems. Ellen Safley, Ph.D., senior associate library director, and Mary Jo Venetis, Ph.D., associate library director of technical services, led the committee and served as liaison between the TDL staff and the McDermott staff.
McDermott Library preserves and enables easy and open access to all types of digital content including text, images, moving images, sound files and data sets for any interested department within the UTD community.
Other committee members were Misu Kim, Ph.D., media and archives cataloger; Iryna Shevchuk, Web services librarian; Paul Oelkrug, C.A., coordinator of Special Collections; Thomas Allen, curator; and Patrizia Nava, library assistant in Special Collections.