The Name

You may well wonder how the TDL’s electronic thesis and dissertation submission and management system got its unusual name. The answer is a combination of a whimsical software development practice and accident.

Vireo is named for a tiny, rare songbird that nests in Texas during the spring and summer months. It grows to about 4.5 inches in length and is listed as an endangered species, mostly as a result of habitat loss.

During the time the TDL was developing Vireo, the technical team was in the habit of using rare bird names as codenames for its projects. Vireo was the name for the ETD project. (Another project, to create a theming mechanism for DSpace, was called Manakin.)

The name wasn’t necessarily intended to be the public brand for the ETD software, but as more and more people became engaged with the project and began using the software, “Vireo” stuck and has become common usage both within and without the Texas Digital Library organization.

For more about vireos (and other birds), see the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s wonderful “All About Birds” website.

Birdfilms, Michael Male, “Black-capped Vireo” June 6, 2010, via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution

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[https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/assets/photo/302142241-720px.jpg, accessed May 2022]