ETD’s at the University of Saskatchewan or… David Fox & Darryl Friesen University of Saskatchewan October 4, 2003

Dude, Where’s my Thesis?! David Fox & Darryl Friesen University of Saskatchewan October 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 2002 Support from Dean of Grad Studies, Library Director D. 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 worldwide NDLTDNDLTD provides support to universities, libraries, faculties and graduate students to encourage authoring, indexing, archiving, retrieving and disseminating ETDs software tool for publishing and disseminating ETDs ETD-ms metadata standard for theses and dissertations NDLTD union archive annual EDT symposia

The ETD International Symposia ETD 2002 – Provo, Utah ETD Berlin ETD 2004 – 7 th International Symposium on ETDs ETD 2004 – Lexington, KY – June 3-5, 2004

Short History of ETD’s, continued Internal report to UofS Library staff, June 2002 A 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 TechETD-db Pilot project with 49 ETD’s to date

UofS ETD Program: tentative plan Fall 2002 – pilot project with volunteer grad students Fall 2003 – ETD’s optional for all grad students Fall 2004 – ETD’s compulsory for all grad students Development of UofS ETD SiteUofS 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-ms

ETD-db: what it is Web-based system for data entry and theses management Written in Perl Uses MySQL database as the backend datastore Uses a series of templates to allow customization Can be installed, configured and customized in a matter of days

ETD-db: what it does Captures source info from grad student Manages the ETD development process Communicates by with grad student, thesis supervisors, Grad Studies ETD isn’t published until reviewed and approved by Grad Studies Installs an OAI server Makes records available for harvesting in a variety of metadata formats, incl. DC, ETD-ms, MARC Separate 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 OAI Repository NDLTD OAI Repository Additional OAI Repositories external repositories Library Catalogue

ETD creation and approval ETD creation process – Login to Library ETD siteLibrary ETD site – Complete “Add New Main Record” form, add supervisor info, upload files ETD approval process – Login to ETD administration siteETD 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 sourcemarc.php – Do local call number search for “Electronic Thesis” to display ETD’s in Web OPACcall number search ETD’s on the Web – Google Search Google – OAI Repository Explorer OAI Repository Explorer – NDLTD OAI ETD Union Catalog NDLTD OAI ETD Union Catalog – OCLC XTCat NDLTD 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 NDLTDNDLTD - ETD-db software ETD-db software - ETD Digital Library ETD Digital Library - ETD 2004 ETD Suleman, H., and Fox, E., Towards Universal Accessibility of ETDs: Building the NDLTD Union ArchiveTowards Universal Accessibility of ETDs: Building the NDLTD Union Archive, 2002 Leveraging OAI harvesting to disseminate thesesLeveraging OAI harvesting to disseminate theses, 2003