ETD 2004 - Presentation abstracts

ETD 2004 Presentation Abstracts (third set)

Title: Global access to electronic Theses in urdu language initiative: problems and perspectives
Authors: Shafi Sheikh

Abstract:
Urdu language and litrature has a high potential for research in many universities especially in subcontinent . India and pakistan has about two hundred universities where theses and dissertations are being produced in urdu language and script besides many countries of the world . These have not been fully covered by any digital initiative. it is here in the department of library and information science( The univversity of kashmir) that an initaive has been taken to cover urdu etc dissertaions of all indian universities for digitization. The programme has been envisaged in two phases. The first phase will include the bibliiographic details of the these along with the abstract of the theses.the secongd phase is intended to digitize them and make available on the web. It is using Ms/sql in the backend and V basic/ ASP in the front end . The use of unicode with qualified Metadat and XML has been experimented,. however there are many problems in its implemetation which will be thoroughly discussed in the paper along with the solutions

Title: Theses and Orations in the Digital Academic REpository (DARE) of Universiteit Leiden
Authors: Trudi C. Noordermeer

Abstract:
Universiteit Leiden was founded in 1572. The university trades PhD theses with other European universities since the end of the sixteenth century. In The Netherlands several universities publish PhD theses and orations on the Internet since 1997. In 2004 Universiteit Leiden carries out a pilot project with the objective to publish PhD theses and orations on line and to investigate the feasibility of a long term operational service. The project concerns the entire workflow:

production by the authors;
communication with the authors;
selection criteria and acquisition procedures;
authenticity;
metadata according to OAI-MPH;
storage in the Digital Academic REpository of Universiteit Leiden using Digitool from Ex Libris or DSpace;
on line publication on the Internet, if permission is received;
copyright issues;
interoperability with the infrastructure of other Dutch universities which cooperate in the national DARE project, organized by Surfnet, the national computernetwork for higher education and research in The Netherlands;
feasibility of re-use of parts of the theses in the e-learning environment Blackboard;
migration to the E-Depot, the national digital archive which is an implementation of the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) standard of NASA. E-Depot is developed by IBM and the Koninkljke Bibliotheek (KB), national library of The Netherlands and it guarantees access to reliable electronic publications for at least a hundred years;
business plan for the long term.

The added value of the pilot project is that it brings together practical results of research and implementation projects and it focuses on interoperability with other Dutch universities in the DARE project.

Title: Why Mess with A Good Thing?: The Search for Improved Efficiency within the ETD Workflow Process
Authors: Anthony D Smith , Joan Dolence , Linda Behrend , Kawanna Bright

Abstract:
At the University of Tennessee, an increasing proportion of graduate students have chosen the electronic option for thesis and dissertation submission since the ETD program’s inception in 1999. Electronic submissions represented 2.5% of total thesis and dissertation submissions in 1999-2000, 5.5% in 2000-2001, 23.5% in 2001-2002, and 38.7% in 2002-2003. Although submitting an ETD is optional at UT, electronic submission is encouraged. Creating an “ETD-friendly” environment involves a careful analysis of the ETD-related activities among multiple departments and the information exchange between them. The workflow process for ETD creation, access, and archiving requires many new activities for the student, academic department, graduate office, campus information technology, library, and user. The UT ETD Technical Working Group is analyzing this process to improve the efficiency of the ETD workflow, to make published ETDs more accessible, and to improve ETD preservation practices. The result of this analysis should provide a strategy that will allow UT campus departments to more effectively handle the rapidly growing number of ETD submissions. This presentation will provide an overview of this newly refined process and outline specific strategies that may help improve the efficiency of the ETD lifecycle.

Title: The Life and Times of Ted: A Fun Look at the Life of an ETD
Authors: Anthony D Smith , Linda Behrend , Joan Dolence , Kawanna Bright

Abstract:
The workflow process for creating, accessing, and archiving ETDs requires many new activities for the student, academic department, graduate office, campus information technology, library, and user. In this poster session, the ETD workflow process will come to life through a character named TED (Tennessee Electronic Dissertation). The session will provide a fun and humorous look at the lifecycle of a UT ETD. A large-screen digital display will air a flash-animated production called “The Life and Times of Ted.” Using cartoon-like animation, the mini-movie will illustrate the workflow process for creating, accessing, and archiving ETDs at UT. This light-hearted look at the ETD lifecycle is designed to amplify some of the important aspects of the process and provide conference entertainment.

Title: Making the plunge into ETD: Reflections from the advisor-advisee team
Authors: Jennifer Shank, Cecilia Wang

Abstract:
This presentation will focus on the experiences of both the dissertation advisor and the advisee on the process of deciding to use the ETD format to the resulting dissertation titled “The Effect of Visual Art on Music Listening”. The presentation will address factors that motivate such endeavor, the enabling events as well as the barriers encountered, and recommendations for future dissertations.

The authors believe that in order to make the plunge into ETD, both student and advisor must feel reasonably comfortable in using technology before making the commitment. After all, both parties realize that extra time must be allotted to finish the dissertation and accomplish such task. In this case, the advisor has taken a workshop on ETD provided by a special trainer on campus. This gave the advisor a perspective of the process involved and convinced her that ETD is a possibility for her more technologically-oriented students. In turn, the student was motivated to use this format because the subject matter of the dissertation involves images of paintings as well as the sound of musical compositions. Such format could provide links to sources of image and sound. Other positive factors that encourage using the ETD format included the availability of a user-friendly Power Point tutorial online, the relative ease of producing PDF files, and the cost-effectiveness of ETD. Some difficulties were obtaining copyrights of visual images and sounds, making proper formats for charts and diagrams, and finding the proper spacing and alignment. In the end, practicality took over, the dissertation needed to be finished in a timely manner, and the document was produced according to restricted guidelines. The important result is that the research study is now accessible to everyone via the Internet at no cost.

As a first endeavor of doing ETD for both the advisee and advisor, the result can be considered a success and future students are definitely encouraged to produce ETD. Recommendations for future candidates include 1. Learn the ETD process early so that much practice can be done prior to planning the document, 2. Plan to include links among parts of the document from the beginning, 3. Edit sound files and image files to satisfaction prior to imbedding them in the document. 4. Be creative on the design and lay-out but be sure to budget your time so as to finish the document in a timely manner.

Title: Title: Upgrading the Virginia Tech ETD-db
Authors: Lance T French

Abstract:
The Virginia Tech electronic thesis and dissertation scripts, or ETD-db, were written in 1996 to transition from a paper-based to electronic submission, cataloging, and dissemination process for theses and dissertations at the university. In 1998, the scripts were updated to use a database driven back end. Since then, very little has been changed with regards to the scripts, or the underlying technologies supporting them, while much has continued to change in the digital world. New archival and metadata standards such as OAIS (Open Archival Information System) and METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) form the basis of the current best practices in digital preservation. To meet the needs of today’s digital library the ETD-db architecture will be updated with a standards focus while maintaining an emphasis on ease of use, extendibility, and interoperability.

Title: Digitisation of indic/ oriental manuscripts
Authors: Mohammed Masoom Raza Dr

Abstract:
Manuscripts still remains an area which deserves special attention.Most of the manuscripts available in regional indic/oriental language have lot to reveal in itself.The best could be to digitise manuscripts,so as to make it accessible to all irrespective of any one nations glory and pride.

Title: ETD Programs as Building Blocks for Institutional Repositories: Laying the Foundation one Graduate Student at a Time
Authors: Robert H. McDonald , Catherine M. Jannik

Abstract:
Digital institutional repositories (IR) are not a new topic within research libraries having received much attention in venues such as the ARL/SPARC/CNI Institutional Repositories Workshop in October 2002 and several recent CNI Task Force Meetings. Institutional repository programs serve as a foundation, an infrastructure, for new models of scholarly communication and in particular, they serve as vehicles for fostering collaboration between faculty and the library and in some instances among faculty, library, and campus information technology (IT) departments.

This paper will focus on two diverse institutions, Florida State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, where ETD programs have become the foundations for larger and more inclusive institutional repository programs.

Florida State University, in a cross-campus collaborative framework (Graduate Studies-Library-Campus IT), launched their mandatory ETD Program in a 12-month time period. A central consideration was creating a metadata structure for this program interoperable with their ongoing institutional repository program, d-Scholarship (http:///www.dscholarship.org).

The Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center has created a Digital Initiatives Department within their library to work with IR technical issues for the whole campus. Georgia Tech is using their ETD Program to test and develop several IR management tools. (http://www.library.gatech.edu/about_us/digital/docs/instituerepositfacts.pdf).

At the heart of both of these programs are the strategies for creating extensible architectures for IR programs that will soon encompass a much wider array of digital objects than typical ETD programs. However, the planning and implementation of the ETD programs played a large part in the launch of the IR initiatives, thus enabling a modular flow from planning, marketing, and implementing both the ETD repository and the larger organizational repositories.

ETD programs help to inform the campus community concerning open access initiatives for scholarly publishing, create awareness regarding interoperability needs, and encourage an atmosphere of collaboration campus-wide. In essence, ETD programs can serve as a training ground for implementing IR programs one graduate student at a time.

Title: DiTeD - Digital Thesis and Dissertations in Portugal
Authors: José Borbinha, Jorge Machado, Luisa Castanheira, Maria Margarida Lopes, Marta Motta

Abstract:
The National Library of Portugal (BN - Biblioteca Nacional) is a deposit library, responsible by the legal deposit in the country. BN is also responsible by the National Bibliography and by PORBASE, the national union catalogue (in UNIMARC). PORBASE registers actually nearly 1.5 million bibliographic descriptions and three million items, from 150 libraries all over the country. At its own, BN holds a collection estimated in three million items, of which half are catalogued in PORBASE (which means that nearly 50% of the records in the database are from BN).

Thesis and dissertations have been covered by the legal deposit law in Portugal for twenty years, and therefore they must be deposited at BN, registered in PORBASE, and reported in the National Bibliography as grey literature. In this moment PORBASE reports nearly twenty seven thousands records of thesis (in fact the number reported by the catalogue in the moment of writing of this document is 38.399, but we learned already that an important number of those records are technical reports, lectures and other academic materials wrongly catalogued as thesis).

BN started addressing the problem of Electronic Thesis and Dissertations in 1999, with a pilot project that developed an assets management system in PERL, for the LINUX operating system, and based on the DIENST technology. This system could perform as a local digital library, with functions for submission, verification, search and retrieve (with access control). The system was loaded with all the bibliographic records of the paper-based thesis registered in PORBASE (the UNIMARC records were easily transformed for the format required by the system), of which one hundred were digitized and their files were associated to the records. In a first moment they were also submitted twenty new digital born theses. This system was used to promote the idea among the university libraries in the country, and a few were interested to install and test it too. Unfortunately, the period of 2001 and 2002 was not an easy financial period for the universities neither for BN, so the project had to be suspended due to the lack of specific support.

The project re-started in 2003, now with the development of new software package for assets management, developed in JAVA and running both in LINUX and WINDOWS. Besides the support for the same functions of the previous system, this system offers new powerful functions, such as authority control (subjects and authors -the system is intended to be used to hold also papers and reports), servers for OAI-PMH and Z39.50, and a functional interface to import and export records in UNIMARC (possible to be extended to any other bibliographic format).

The project develop now in 2004 starting with the installation of a fully functional system at BN, interoperable with PORBASE, and also interoperable with a second system installed in the most important engineering school in the country, IST - Instituto Superior Técnico. This will be used to promote the concept, and motivate other universities to follow a similar process (several candidates demonstrated already their interest). This cooperation will be open to the 14 public and 10 private universities existing in Portugal, as also to the several hundreds of polytechnic schools and similar (relevant for master thesis). The purpose it to bring to the network as many schools as possible, using the DiTeD assets management system, or others (meanwhile several universities have been developing their own solutions too, or using other existing ones, such as DSpace). In parallel the project will promote two other actions of work, one with the purpose to promote projects for the retrospective digitization of printed thesis, and another one for the normalization of the descriptions (using the Portuguese Cataloguing Rules and the UNIMARC format as references). Finally, it will be given also a special attention to the international cooperation, not only with NDLTD, but also in bilateral actions with other Portuguese speaking countries (especially for the building of virtual thematic collections and dissemination).

This paper presents more details of this project, including:

an analysis of the actual bibliographic descriptions of thesis in dissertation in PORBASE (subjects and universities)
a description of the actual practices and experiences with ETDs in the most important universities in the country
A description of a cooperating program where the National Library will play the role of a centralizing entity, where, taking advantage of the critical mass, specific investments and actions can be performed with relevant savings for all (such as the interfaces for the international cooperation).
A technical description of the DiTeD system and of its model of interoperation with PORBASE and the other local systems (DiTeD or others), as also a description of how it can be valuable for the creation of this national network for digital thesis and dissertations.

Title: The Development of CALIS ETD Sharing Project
Authors: Xiaoxia Yao, Long Xiao

Abstract:
As a national wide academic library consortium, China Academic Library and Information System (CALIS) contributes to resource sharing among all the universities in China. Results of the study indicate that the need to Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) has seen a significant increase every year. So it is well understood that ETD sharing is extremely important for CALIS to help its members to serve their end users.

CALIS ETD sharing project is initiated in 1999. It includes three sub-projects: the development of Chinese thesis and dissertation abstract and full text database; the purchasing of foreign language thesis and dissertation abstract and full text database; the utilizing of free charged ETD resources.

After four years’ development, Chinese thesis and dissertation abstract database has 100,000 records, which are submitted by 80 CALIS members. It will be extended to full-text database in the near future. From 2000, CALIS started to organize the cooperative purchasing of ProQuest dissertation abstract database, more than 70 members benefit from the importing each year. While at the same time, about 300,000 selected full texts from ProQuest dissertation database are purchased by 90 members together to form a foreign language thesis and dissertation full text database sharing among participating members. At the end of last year, the cooperation between Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and CALIS were in the process. NDLTD helped CALIS established the mirror site of NDLTD database in China already. It definitely helps CALIS members to utilize the free charged ETD resources. Next, CALIS plans to integrate all the ETD resources to unified search platform to provide one-stop ETD service.

This article gives a comprehensive picture of how CALIS ETD sharing project operates, what it provides, and the vision of it.

Title: Effect of E-resources on Standards
Authors: Rajesh Chandrakar

Abstract:
With the influence of the information and communication technology (ICT) into the library, different format of the library has come out from traditional to hybrid, electronic, digital and virtual. Further with the proliferation of the Internet, as well as related content and tools, technology is enabling the exponential growth of online resources. These resources includes pre-prints, including technical reports, tutorials, posters, and demonstrations from conferences; student project reports; tutorial; e-books; e-journals; e-articles; theses and dissertations; working papers; course ware; tool descriptions; programmes; algorithms; maps; movies; audio; video; images etc. These variety of obstacles highlight serious technical problems and affect to its wide spread use. Further more, access of scientific information, finding the appropriate information and dissemination channels for academicians and scientists caused alarm among policy makers and subject researchers in this area. Ironically, it forced them to think over the issues regarding how to preserve, manage, store, retrieve, archive, disseminate, interoperate, and serve to the users including the single question “How can we use technology to make things better in libraries?”. Finally in the area of e-resources, research investigates the trends in ICT and library knowledge management (KM) practice to enhance the value of library services and improve the productivity of librarians and information seekers. And ultimately, the area of research deeply involves and exclusively relates to the standards and protocols for solving the problems and managing the challenging issues.

The author in this paper discusses the new technological changes developed as standards due to the rapidly changing digital environment in terms of e-resources.