1 Virtual Day on Digital Theses 5 October 2007 – Mexico Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) – Edward A. Fox 1, Executive Director Gail McMillan, Secretary Ryan Richardson, PostDoc Venkat Srinivasan, Graduate Research Asst. 1

Acknowledgements (selected) Colleagues: Tony Atkins, Lillian Cassel, Debra Dudley, John Eaton, Lourdes Fernandez, Marcos Gonçalves, Ming Luo, Silvia González Marín, Uma Murthy, Doug Oard, Alfredo Sanchez, Craig Scott, Hussein Suleman, Alberto Castro Thompson, … Sponsors: Dept. of Education (FIPSE), DFG, Elsevier, Google, IBM, IMLS, Microsoft, NSF (DUE , IIS , , , ), OCLC, RDEC/ACE, SOLINET, SUN, SURA, VTLS, …

Digital Libraries & ETDs Domain: graduate education, research Genre:ETDs=electronic theses & dissertations Benefits: ETD creators develop lifelong skills with DLs. Students, faculty, departments, & universities save money and gain visibility. Project: Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations (NDLTD)

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5 Importance of ETDs Open access is natural and highly effective.Levels playing field, making research from every nation and university equally visible. Promotes scholarship and understanding since research details are widely shared. Quantity of content is comparable to that of the journal publishing enterprise. Can leverage “electronic” for flexibility, expressivity, savings, and perservation.

6 Main Points 1.NDLTD was launched in 1996 to help with ETD activities worldwide. 2.It is a member organization, so we urge joining by all interested in digital theses. 3.Visible results, e.g., ETDs from Mexico accessible from the NDLTD Union Catalog (and then through Scirus, …), show that working together helps everyone. 4.NDLTD helps with training/education, conferences, standards, technologies, research, and leadership.

Aiding universities to enhance graduate education, publishing, and IPR efforts Helping improve the availability and content of theses and dissertations Educating ALL future scholars so they can publish electronically and effectively use digital libraries (i.e., are Information Literate and can be more expressive) What are we doing?

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11 Digital Objects (DOs) Born digital –Word processors (e.g., Word) –XML, LaTex, BibTeX, and other processors –Multimedia authoring and capture tools Digitized version of “real” object –Scanners, cameras, MRI, … –3D models, datasets, … Renderings for presentation, preservation –PDF/A –ORE (Object Reuse and Exchange)

12 Metadata Objects (MDOs) Dublin Core, and extension to ETD-MS RDF OAI (Open Archives Initiative) sharing MARC Crosswalks, mappings Ontologies (to aid classification)

13 LOCKSS Lots of copies keep stuff safe Initially at Stanford (Vicky Reich) Initial focus on lower levels Initial content: journals Extending to ETDs (Gail McMillan)

14 OAI - Open Archives Initiative Advocacy for interoperability Standard for transferring metadata among digital libraries –Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH) Standard for handling compound/complex objects like ETDs –ORE

15 OAI – Repository Perspective Required: Protocol DO MDO

16 OAI – Black Box Perspective OA 1OA 2OA 4OA 3OA 5OA 6OA 7

17 Discovery Current Awareness Preservation Service Providers Data Providers Metadata harvesting The World According to OAI

18 Software Options ETD-db (Virginia Tech; also in Spanish) –Customized into ADT solution (Australia) – ons/ETDdb4Uppsala2007.ppt -> future Many local / commercial solutions Digital libraries or institutional repositories –Eprints, Greenstone, Fedora/Fez, … –DSpace (MIT, HP Labs)

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23 Institutional Repositories - 1 “Institutional repositories are digital collections that capture and preserve the intellectual output of a single university or a multiple institution community of colleges and universities.” Crow, R. “Institutional repository checklist and resource guide”, SPARC, Washington, D.C., USA

24 Institutional Repositories - 2 “A university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution.” Lynch, C.A. In ARL Bimonthly Report 226, pp. 1-7, Feb. 2003,

25 Software Issues Be sure: –Can export metadata using OAI-PMH –Is a sustainable solution –Allows open access and preservation Request support for –Flexible workflow management Scope: just ETDs institutional memory Scope: time coverage -- authoring, reviewing, submission, defense presentation

Student Gets Committee Signatures and Submits ETD Signed Grad School/ Library/IT

Library Catalogs ETD, Access is Opened to the New Research WWW NDLTD

28 Union catalog: OCLC dler?verb=ListSets (sets of ETDs) Is getting data from WorldCat (so, from many sites!). Will harvest from all others who contact them. Need DC and either ETD-MS or MARC.

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31 OCLC SRU Interface

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33 ETD Union Search Mirror Site in China (CALIS) ( – popular site!)

34 VTLS and Content Languages The VTLS browse/search service has data in many different languages. These include: English German Greek Korean Portuguese

35 Language = German; hits = 137

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38 ETDs: Library Goals Improve library services –Better turn-around time –Always available Reduce work –catalog from e-text –eliminate handling: mailing to ProQuest, bindery prep, check- out, check-in, reshelving, etc. Save space

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40 The Concept Map: From learning tool to cross- language knowledge discovery tool Problem: Finding interesting ETDs written in Language1 may be difficult for Language2 speakers, and vice versa. NDLTD has > 360,000 ETDs in > 12 languages. Many TDs from the Spanish speaking world are not yet in NDLTD, e.g., UNAM in Mexico City has 50,000+ ETDs. ETDs exist in many languages, but discovery and summarizing across languages is even more difficult.

41 Cross-language Experiment - 1 English version of ETD by Saraiya

42 Cross-language Experiment - 2 Spanish (automatic) translation of ETD by Saraiya

43 Cmap Study Summary Using NLP tools and a domain-specific ontology We have been able to automatically produce concept maps for large documents (ETDs). For the cross-language case, using Phrase translations mined from ETD collection Off-the-shelf MT tools We have been able to automatically produce & translate concept maps that allowed users to determine relevance of ETDs better than using machine-translated abstracts alone. Google will support further R&D.

44 Problems Solved/Solvable Plagiarism Concern over quality Concern about publishers Intellectual property rights management Handling restricted works Pilot -> Recommendation -> Requirement Inertia, lack of vision/leadership

45 Appeal Join NDLTD Move forward (in stages) so all theses and dissertations in Mexico lead to open ETDs. Make all metadata accessible through the NDLTD Union Catalog. Let NDLTD know how we can help! PREGUNTAS?