DSpace, ETDs, Automatic Metadata Extraction Bradley Hemminger Jackson Fox Mao Ni School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Big Picture Develop ETDs and Digital Libraries at UNC. Use the development of ETDs at UNC to drive –Digital Library support at UNC –Advancement of DL and ETD research

Background Evaluation of ETDs in US. What sites are producing significant numbers of ETDs? What systems are in common use to support ETDs? How effective are these systems for the submitters, administrators, and searchers?

Contenders for DL for ETDs Virginia Tech ETD-DB EPrints DSpace ProQuest

ETD Status Summary Oct active programs found via NDLTD Which application used? –contentdm 1 –etd-db 11 –other 5 Average of 1211 records Records available through the NDLTD union catalog? –Available 4 –Not available 13 Records available through NDLTD OAI catalog? –Available 6 –Not available 11 Total Records available through OAI: 4995 (average of 991 records) Contrast with today (Current List of OAI ETDs)Current List of OAI ETDs

Analysis of DSpace for ETDs Author contribution process long and painful. Limited rights administration (comes with single choice defined for MIT). Version 1.1 is not fully OAI compliant (fixed in 1.2). Limited capabilities for showing metadata. When new metadata fields are created, there is no way to specify whether they should be displayed or not.

Analysis …Continued Collection based metadata not supported (yet). Would help to have fewer assumptions built into the user interface. Contributor vs author confusion in reporting (dc.contributor.advisor listed as author as well as dc.contributor.author). Changed metadata used from dc.contributor.author to dc.creator.

Analysis… Continued Add support for common metadata formats; support is needed for exporting ETD-MS metadata (currently requires customizing the OAIcat software) Full text search not implemented yet Support for more flexibility in connecting local user identification/authentication schemes is desirable. DSpace assumes IDs will be used.

Improvements made to DSpace Automated metadata extraction form author self contributed materials Rights administration extended to support Creative Commons User authentication based on UNC ONYEN

Simplify Input of Items

Workflow

Our starting point into DSpace

Rights Administration

Drawbacks to using DSpace Customization required. These cause problems later when you upgrade. Some important functions not available yet (collection based metadata, full text searching,…).

Experience with SILS theses Customized version of DSpace used ~70 masters papers submitted in spring Comments solicited. Most feedback came from students and staff who made themselves available to help students in the submission process. Comments provided by administrator as well. No feedback from searchers yet.

Comments….. Problems encountered were mainly with using Word template (this was a new addition as part of ETD process), and conversion from Word to PDF. DSpace: –Users had to create a DSpace identity to submit, even though just for one use. –After submitting users cannot edit their item until it has been reviewed by administrator.

Administrator comments Because of DSpace information flow, a student bringing a question to administrator about theses issue, could not view the thesis on the administrator screen, because it had been rejected (sent back) and was not longer accessible by them. When reviewing only abbreviated metadata list is seen (we changed default to show all metadata). More convenient and powerful interface for administrator would be helpful. Administrator needs to know specific item number in order to edit. Administrator has to re-enter through separate administrative interface in order to be able to edit items in their collection.

UNC Plan Locally use DSpace in Library to house and make available UNC produced theses and dissertations. At the same time, use ProQuest as off site long term archive for all materials. Using SILS as prototype to develop and test effectiveness of DSpace for ETDs.

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