ETDs: An American Sampler

Gail McMillan

Director, Digital Library and Archives

Virginia Polytechnic Institute &State University

JISC/CNI: York July 6, 2006

Networked Digital Libraryof Theses and Dissertations

233 members worldwide 94 universities,13 associations,

consortia, etc. in the United States• 32 require ETDs• 32 Association of Research Libraries

13 require

• 71 Council of Graduate Schools 29 require

http://www.ndltd.org/

Key Issues for ETD Initiatives1. Getting started2. Software

ETD-db: submission and management IRs: institutional repositories

3. Accessibility Authors’ choices OAI: Open Archives Initiative

4. Training Tutorials online ETD Guide

5. Copyright6. Preservation

ETD Issue: Getting StartedUniversity of Washington

Library • Space needs • Institutional repository • Initiated

Graduate School • Policy changes• Procedural adaptations• “Golden Promise” to faculty Students• Timely online availability

ETD Issue: SOFTWARE

ETD-db: submission and management http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ETD-db/ http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ETD-db/developer/

IRs: institutional repositories http://repositories.tdl.org/handle/2249.1/1 http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/ http://eidr.wvu.edu/

ETD-db http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ETD-db/

• Web pages, perl scripts interact with MySQL• Standard interface for web users, authors, graduate

school, library personnel • Enter and manage files and metadata

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ETD-db/developer/• Software and hardware requirements • Instructions on downloading, installing, and customizing

scripts Improvements coming: September 2006

• Timed release• Merged databases• Improved OAI

ETD-dbHardware Requirements

VT uses a dual-processor Sun Enterprise 250 with 384 Mb of RAM, running Solaris 2.7. 18Gb drive is allocated solely for the ETD collection.

Web server (e.g., UNIX-based server platform) Disk space for submissions

• VT averages 2.5 Megabytes per submission• ETD-db is not designed to span multiple drives.

Memory for web server, database server, other tasks

Software Requirements Mysql Perl and CGI, DBI, DBD, and Tie-IxHash modules Web server software, e.g., Apache Web Server

Florida State University

ETD-db• Workflow advantages for Graduate School

DigiTool (ExLibris)• Search engine

DSpace• Missing functionality• Programming personnel needed

West Virginia Universityhttp://eidr.wvu.edu/

eIDR: Electronic Institutional Document Repository• ETDs since 1998• Digital library system: collections serve

entire university community

Texas Digital Libraryhttp://repositories.tdl.org/handle/2249.1/1

More than 40 campuses, 375,000 students; over 4,000 theses and dissertations in 2004.

ETDs with MODS• XML based, web friendly, transportable, processible, configurable,

sufficiently descriptive without being too complex, extensible• Why not MARC: isn’t XML based, can’t easily be output from web

forms, requires special “cataloging” knowledge and systems to implement.

• Why not Dublin Core: insufficient specificity, doesn’t specify a syntax and is inconsistently applied, isn’t extensible.

Manakin: enables communities and collections to establish a unique look and feel that is distinct from the default installation of DSpace.

ETD Issue: ACCESSIBILITY

Universities offer options• http://di.tamu.edu/bsurratt/ETDPolicies/

Authors’ make choices• http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/data/

OAI: Open Archives Initiative• http://www.ndltd.org/join/union.en.html

ETD Access Policies at ARL Institutions: A Preliminary Study

4% Non-exclusive right to reproduce 4% Open access only46% Open access or withhold for limited time42% Open access; restrict and withhold for

limited time 4% Restrict and withhold for limited time

Brian Surratt, Texas A&Mhttp://adt.caul.edu.au/etd2005/papers/0555Surratt.pdf

http://di.tamu.edu/bsurratt/ETDPolicies/

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

No accessMixed accessVT-only--scannedVT-only born-digitalWorldwide access

Snapshot of Availability May 2000-2006

13. If you restricted access to your ETD, on what did you base your decision?

55%

20%17%

4% 3% 2%

46%

10%

23%

10%

6% 5%

Advice offaculty

Other Personal choice Advice ofothers

Advice ofpublisher

Patent pending

2004/20052000/2001

NDLTD develops global resource discovery services to promote the visibility of ETDs.• http://rocky.dlib.vt.edu/~etdunion/ • http://www.ndltd.org/join/union.en.html• http://alcme.oclc.org/ndltd/• http://zippo.vtls.com/cgi-bin/ndltd/chameleon

Union Catalog Project: distributed members’ collections appear as one digital library of ETDs.

Built by harvesting metadata from Open Archives of electronic theses and dissertations• OCLC’s NDLTD Union Catalog

247,390 NDLTD from >60 entities (135,166 US)

Ohio Library and Information Network

Worldwide ETD Search: 162,057 • http://search.ohiolink.edu/etd/world.cgi• Internet-available ETDs collected by OhioLINK

OIA harvesting per NDLTD Union Catalog Crawls “handful of sizeable ETDs collections…which run

on ETD-db software.” Indexes only if full text and freely available online.

OhioLINK ETD Search: 8,968• http://search.ohiolink.edu/etd/

Key ETD Issue: TRAINING

Tutorials http://www.adobe.com/education/etd/tutorials.html http://gradsch.osu.edu/Depo/ETD_Tutorial/ETD_Tutorial.pdf

ETD Guide http://www.etdguide.org/ http://flexwiki.etdguide.org/

Online ETD Tutorial Modular program stepping authors

through series of 5 lessons PDF with text, images, audio, movies 2-7 interactive exercises linked to movie

demonstrations Usability tested including compatibility

with 3rd-part screen readers

PSU: Acrobat how-to for ETD authors: http://cac.psu.edu/etd/howto/acrobat/

Lesson 1: Read an ETD: download, browse, navigate, search within Lesson 2: Create a PDF File

• Use Acrobat PDFMaker within Microsoft Word• Use Print Command in a word processing application • Combine two or more PDF files into a single document

Lesson 3: Modify a PDF File• Change page numbering• Move a page • Insert new pages; delete, rotate pages

Lesson 4: Add PDF Navigation to an ETD: bookmarks, page and destination links

Lesson 5: Add Multimedia: movie and sound clips

ETD Guide

http://www.etdguide.org/• UNESCO• French, Spanish, Greek

http://flexwiki.etdguide.org/• Share best practices• Celebrate exemplary ETDs

ETD Issue: PUBLISHING and COPYRIGHT

I hereby grant to [university] and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible…in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation, or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

Authors inadequately understand ©

Rights as copyright holders Responsibilities when using others

materials Future rights before signing publishers’

agreements• Works for a dissertation • Reusing materials for teaching or book

chapter

Pennsylvania State University

Promotes intellectual property rights through ETDs• Library teaches law seminars to graduate students

Limitations on exclusive rights http://www.etd.psu.edu/faq_pub.html

1. Others may excerpt portions of your thesis for scholarly work or research without obtaining your permission; they must credit you as the source. (fair use)

2. ProQuest/UMI receives authors’ permissions to sell copies.

3. Penn State has the right to make single copies of the thesis for nonprofit purposes.

Copyright Law and the Doctoral Dissertation: Guidelines to Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities

www.ifla.org/documents/infopol/copyright/crews.txt

Bowling Green State University Conflict of interest

• Worldwide access• ETD ≈ prior publication

Extended negotiations• Graduate College• Creative Writing Programs

MFA: 21 of 22 do not have ETD initiatives Publication-dependent careers

• Scientific & Technical Communication

ETD Issue: PRESERVATION

Preservation Strategies • Dark archives• Replication w/geographic dispersion• Verification• Format migration

6 Association of SouthEastern (US) Research Libraries Adapted LOCKSS to a private, independent network using OAI-

PMH Crawled and collected web content based on permissions Each university cached every other universities’ ETDs Audited file integrity Addressed policy issues: dark archiving, removing files, adding

programs

LOCKSS tutorial http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/lockss/introduction.htm

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Dark Archive In The Sunshine State

Digital preservation repository application (open source license) developed by Florida Center for Library Automation with:

• Ingest functions• Data management and dissemination• Format normalization

Mass format migration Migration on ingest

http://www.fcla.edu/digitalArchive/

An American ETD SamplerThank you!

Questions? Comments?

JISC/CNI: York July 6, 2006

Gail McMillanDirector, Digital Library and Archives

Virginia Polytechnic Institute &State University