In 2010, the Texas Digital Library (TDL) released the first version of Vireo—open source software developed to ease the electronic thesis submission and review process, as well as to deposit the final document in the institutional repository. Now, a decade and a few versions later, TDL and the broader community of open source developers have released Vireo 4, which introduces a number of new features. These updates continue to ease the submission and review process for students and thesis reviewers as well as continue to archive student works in repositories. For instance, Vireo 4 users can create independent workflows (based on submission type, college, degree, etc.) that enable institutions to collect different information based on submission type. So, for example, an institution can collect different information from doctoral students than master’s students at the time of document submission. While in Vireo 3 students typed information such as committee member names, email addresses, and department names, in Vireo 4, institutions can upload lists of controlled vocabulary that display as drop-down menus for student use, thus providing consistent spelling and terminology and reducing metadata editing.

This poster, presented at USETDA 2022, offers a side-by-side comparison of Vireo 3 (released in 2015) to Vireo 4 (released in 2020). Using visuals from the interface and descriptions, we highlight these updates to help users better understand the changes and how they might be applied and customized. We also share tips and best practices for implementing Vireo 4 at different institutions. Building connections between students, thesis reviewers, the repository, and the public is one of the core goals of Vireo. Now with the new features available in Vireo 4, institutions can create even stronger connections to further this goal.