Morphing metadata: maximizing access to electronic theses and dissertations

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to describe work at Kent State University Libraries and Media Services to promote and devise electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) storage at OhioLINK's ETD Center, to find efficient methods to represent these unique scholarly materials within the library's catalog, and to foster the establishment of state‐wide library catalog standards for ETDs.Design/methodology/approachA semi‐automated process has been devised that extracts student‐supplied metadata already available in the OhioLINK ETD Center to provide almost instantaneous access to unique resources through the library catalog. A Perl program uses the OAI‐PMH protocol to extract metadata, modifies and enhances the data, and inserts it into the Innovative Interfaces, Inc. catalog. Significant effort was made to map the data from ETD‐MS to MARC. Catalogers retrieve records for completion and contribute full bibliographic records to OCLC WorldCat in addition to the local and consortium catalogs.FindingsThe process successfully produces a provisional bibliographic record that is useful immediately for resource discovery and that can serve as the basis for full cataloging.Practical implicationsThis research provides libraries with a method they can adapt locally to provide provisional level access, full level access, or both, to unique scholarly research.Originality/valueThis research broke new ground regarding the use of a software agent to repurpose metadata in library catalogs. It also impacted national cataloging standards for ETDs.

A Review of Emerging ETD Initiatives, Challenges and Future Developments

“…ETD is defined as a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation in electronic, rather than paper format. -ETD refers to a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation that is archived and circulated electronically rather than in print and bound format‖ [9], [14], ETDs have gained huge attention of institutions and organizations worldwide [2], [5], [16], [24], [25] as a technological tool for the graduate research outputs to be communicated globally [9]. On the other hand, a research management system (RMS) is broader in concept compared to IRfor the research processes that are integrated.…”

“…The project caught the attention of the Organization of American States and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, making them members of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. It is a collaborative ETD project that promotes to improve graduate education, and reduce submission cost while facilitating the availability of graduate student researches [9], [24]. Thereafter, several members worldwide have joined the advocacy as shown in http://www.ndltd.org/about/membership.Likewise, affiliation to world-known organizations like NDLTD became a trend in aiming for wider visibility, example: China NDLTD [2].…”

“…The concept of ETD was initiated by UMI in 1987, during a meeting hosted by UMI in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the participation of representatives from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and the University of Michigan [1], [7], [9], [14], [24]. UMI is now Proquest's UMI Dissertation Publishing.…”

Defining Best Practices in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Metadata

“…An OhioLINK member library, Kent State, has used the ability to harvest metadata from the ETD Center to achieve instantaneous discovery in its local catalog (McCutcheon, Kreyche, Maurer, & Nickerson, 2008). Kent State harvests metadata from the Center using a Perl script with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).…”

Repurposing MARC Metadata for an Institutional Repository

“…3 McCutcheon and colleagues described a semiautomatic process that also uses Perl to harvest OhioLINK ETD Center metadata, transform it to MARC, and add it to the library catalog. 4 Deng and Reese discussed the automatic harvesting and transformation of DC metadata for ETDs submitted to the DSpace repositories at Wichita State University and Oregon State University to create MARC catalog records using MarcEdit.…”