Background
We believe this is a first step toward establishing the library as a place to collect, describe and disseminate the intellectual property produced at the University. We have an opportunity - with the first set of Ed.D. dissertations being written now - to begin to collect the papers electronically instead of storing them in paper in the archives only.
Read this paper! Institutional Policies and Strategies for Electronic Theses and Dissertations - June 2006; excellent and timely overview of the situation
(Inter)National Models
- Virginia Tech - has been the leader in the effort to collect and disseminate theses and dissertations in electronic formats. We can look to them for guidance and historical context for such a project.
- NDTLD - Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations; provides "...information about the initiative, how to set up Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) programmes, how to create and locate ETD's, and current research in digital libraries related to NDLTD and ETD's.". NOTE: They use DSpace? as their repository software!
- The Guide for Electronic Theses and Dissertations - from UNESCO; a mammoth 400-page document, but with some interesting parts, including a section on libraries
Our Situation
The libray has installed and configured DSpace - the repository program developed at MIT The software is based on open standards and is fully harvestable. Therefore, we propose to use this same repository for a number of projects - including electronic theses and dissertations. It is ready to use immediately.
Things to work out:
The context for these goals is this coming year before the first EDD theses come online. While we may not have reached all these goals or solved all these problems, we anticipate that we will run up against all or most of these issues.
SHORT TERM
- thesis presentational format
- file format for submission ( pdf + paper copy )
- workflow and submission processes
- establishing communities in DSpace
- copyright (we may want to suggest a Creative Commons license)
MEDIUM TERM:
- information dissemination, OAI harvesting, etc.
- archiving and digital preservation
LONG TERM:
- structured document creation that goes beyond simple presentation and includes "semantic" markup
- web native formats liks xhtml, xml, png
- rich media documents including audio, video, and research data
Subtopics for individual groups