ETD’s at the University of Saskatchewanor…

David Fox & Darryl FriesenUniversity of SaskatchewanOctober 4, 2003

Dude, Where’s my Thesis?!

David Fox & Darryl FriesenUniversity of SaskatchewanOctober 4, 2003

The UofS ETD Process

Illustrates some important current trends in info dissemination/retrieval:

– Open source software– Automatic metadata generation– OAI harvesting– Automatic library catalogue updates

Intent is to be maintenance free– minimal staff intervention

Short History of ETD’s at UofS

meeting with Grad Studies, Jan 2002Support from Dean of Grad Studies, Library DirectorD. Dombrosky, D. Fox, D. Salt attended ETD 2002 Symposium at BYU

ETD 2002 Symposium Provo, Utah

May 30 - June 2, 2002

ETD 2002 Symposium Provo, Utah

May 30 - June 2, 2002

NDLTD - Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

“a loose federation of member institutions and organizations that publish ETDs”. (Suleman & Fox)

Founded in 1996; 185 member universities and supporting organizations worldwideNDLTD provides support to universities, libraries, faculties and graduate students to encourage authoring, indexing, archiving, retrieving and disseminating ETDs

software tool for publishing and disseminating ETDsETD-ms metadata standard for theses and dissertationsNDLTD union archive

annual EDT symposia

The ETD International Symposia

ETD 2002 – Provo, Utah ETD 2003 - Berlin ETD 2004 – 7th International Symposium on ETDs

– Lexington, KY – June 3-5, 2004

Short History of ETD’s, continued

Internal report to UofS Library staff, June 2002A lot has happened on the past year!ETD Implementation Task Force:

D. Fox, D. Friesen, D. Salt, VT Lam, D. Dombrosky

Implementation/customization of ETD-db software from Virginia TechPilot project with 49 ETD’s to date

UofS ETD Program: tentative plan

Fall 2002 – pilot project with 20-50 volunteer grad students

Fall 2003 – ETD’s optional for all grad students

Fall 2004 – ETD’s compulsory for all grad studentsDevelopment of UofS ETD Site

ETD-db software

Open source software developed at Virginia Tech as a joint project between their Grad School, Digital Library and the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)Implementation of ETD-ms specification developed by NDLTD (and others)

ETD-db: what it is

Web-based system for data entry and theses managementWritten in PerlUses MySQL database as the backend datastoreUses a series of templates to allow customizationCan be installed, configured and customized in a matter of days

ETD-db: what it does

Captures source info from grad studentManages the ETD development process

Communicates by email with grad student, thesis supervisors, Grad StudiesETD isn’t published until reviewed and approved by Grad Studies

Installs an OAI serverMakes records available for harvesting in a variety of metadata formats, incl. DC, ETD-ms, MARCSeparate local file of MARC communications records

Web Server

SQL Database (MySQL)

ETD-db: how it works

MARC

DC, ETD-ms,MARC …

OAI Server

Grad Student

Committee /Advisors

data entry / maintenance

browse / search

OCLC OAIRepository

NDLTD OAIRepository

Additional OAIRepositories

external repositories

LibraryCatalogue

ETD creation and approval

ETD creation process– Login to Library ETD site– Complete “Add New Main Record” form,

add supervisor info, upload files ETD approval process

– Login to ETD administration site– Review and manage submitted, approved,

withheld ETD’s

ETD output

ETD’s in the Catalogue– Run the marc.php script to display the

MARC source– Do local call number search for “Electronic

Thesis” to display ETD’s in Web OPAC ETD’s on the Web

– Google Search– OAI Repository Explorer– NDLTD OAI ETD Union Catalog– OCLC XTCat NDLTD

Conclusions

Dude, where’s my thesis? everywhere!– In the Catalogue, in the general Web search

engines, in the OCLC XTCat NDLTD thesis union list, and elsewhere

DC is sufficient to describe theses and many other types of publications. MARC is overkill for ETD’s

The ETD-db model for creation and dissemination of metadata has relevance for other types of local information: e.g. archival, special collections materials

Some Useful URLs

NDLTD - http://www.ndltd.org/ETD-db software - http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ETD-db/ETD Digital Library - http://www.theses.org/ETD 2004 - http://www.uky.edu/ETD/ETD2004/Suleman, H., and Fox, E.,

Towards Universal Accessibility of ETDs: Building the NDLTD Union Archive, 2002Leveraging OAI harvesting to disseminate theses, 2003