ETDs: An American Sampler
Gail McMillan
Director, Digital Library and Archives
Virginia Polytechnic Institute &State University
JISC/CNI: York
July 6, 2006
Networked Digital Library
of 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 Initiatives
1. Getting started
2. Software
 ETD-db: submission and management
 IRs: institutional repositories
3. Accessibility
 Authors’ choices
 OAI: Open Archives Initiative
4. Training
 Tutorials online
 ETD Guide
5. Copyright
6. Preservation
ETD Issue: Getting Started
University 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-db
Hardware 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 University
http://eidr.wvu.edu/

eIDR: Electronic Institutional Document
Repository
• ETDs since 1998
• Digital library system: collections serve
entire university community
Texas Digital Library
http://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 only
46% Open access or withhold for limited time
42% Open access; restrict and withhold for
limited time
4% Restrict and withhold for limited time
Brian Surratt, Texas A&M
http://adt.caul.edu.au/etd2005/papers/0555Surratt.pdf
http://di.tamu.edu/bsurratt/ETDPolicies/
Snapshot of Availability May 2000-2006
2000
2001
No access
Mixed access
VT-only--scanned
VT-only born-digital
Worldwide access
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
13. If you restricted access to your ETD,
on what did you base your decision?
2004/2005
2000/2001
55%
46%
23%
20%
17%
10%
Advice of
faculty
Other
10%
Personal choice
4%
6%
3%
Advice of
others
Advice of
publisher
5%
2%
Patent pending

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 nonexclusive 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
Quick Tim e™ and a
TIFF (Uncompres sed) dec om pres s or
are needed to see this pic ture.
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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
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 Sampler
Thank you!
Questions? Comments?
JISC/CNI: York
Gail McMillan
July 6, 2006
Director, Digital Library and Archives
Virginia Polytechnic Institute &State University