Mark Scharff, Washington University in St. Louis
MOUG Annual Meeting 2011, Philadelphia, PA
NUTS AND BOLTS ABOUT ELECTRONS :
CATALOGING ELECTRONIC THESES AND
DISSERTATIONS
SCOPE
What are ETD’s?
 How do they differ from analog counterparts?
 How are they described?

WHAT ARE ETD’S?

Textual (including music)—two possibilities
 Submitted
as a print document and subsequently
digitized
 Submitted as an electronic document

Audio/visual
 Submitted
in analog formats and subsequently
digitized
 Submitted as digital files
 Present as illustrative material
ETD VS. ANALOG DOCUMENT
May include embedded links to other online
documents, spreadsheets, videos, programs
 Access may be greater, or restricted by different
means

FOCUS AND ASSUMPTIONS FOR TODAY
“Born-digital” ETDs are on the agenda
 The electronic document is an remote online
resource.
 Separate record for electronic version, not a
“one-record approach”
 Will not deal with cataloging analog version
(much)

CONSIDERATIONS AND DECISIONS
How are the files received?
 Where do files reside?
 What if any metadata is present there? Who
created it?
 Does the student provide metadata? Is it
harvestable?
 Will the cataloger be involved in creating nonMARC cataloging?

TEXTUAL DOCUMENTS—FIXED FIELDS
Type (Leader/06)—code for predominant
intellectual content, as published resource.
 Fixed field Form (008/23)

s
= generic code for electronic resources
 o = code for online resource
TEXTUAL DOCUMENTS—FIXED FIELDS
006—add to bring out computer file attributes
and attributes of any accompanying material
 007—add if desired to bring out attributes of
computer file or of accompanying material.
Provider-neutral guidelines—1st 2 bytes
mandatory

TEXTUAL DOCUMENTS—VARIABLE FIELDS
245--$h [electronic resource]
 260—mileage varies

 Date
only ($c)—analogous to print
 “[S.l. : s.n., date]”—published item with unknown
details—Provider-neutral guidelines
 Robert Bremer (OCLC)—regard university or
department as the publisher.
TEXTUAL DOCUMENTS—FIXED FIELDS

300—variety of approaches here, too
 Purely
1
electronic text (1 file : 240,000 bytes)
 Purely
 ix,
in analog terms, minus $c
256 p. : ill.
 Hybrid
1
digital description—AACR2 9.5
approach (Provider-neutral)
online resource (ix, 256 p. : ill.)
TEXTUAL DOCUMENTS—VARIABLE FIELDS

Notes
 Source
of title (500)
 Dissertation note (502)
 Restrictions on access (506)—generally local
 Type of computer file (516)—for unusual stuff
TEXTUAL DOCUMENTS—VARIABLE FIELDS

More Notes
 Additional
physical form (530)
 Only
if you’re concerned with an analog copy
 Provider-neutral guidelines—use 776 field instead
 System
details note (538)—only if access is other
than WWW
 Abstract (520)
TEXTUAL DOCUMENTS—VARIABLE FIELDS
Main entry (1XX)—nothing unusual
 Subject headings (6XX)—for intellectual
content; no standardized genre/form headings
to add, but local practice might call for them
 Added entries (7XX)—may wish to give one for
the publisher (university or department)

NONTEXTUAL DOCUMENTS

Supplementary material to text
 If
described as part of main thesis, may call for
additional 007 fields and some additional
information in notes.

Musical scores
 As
remote electronic resources, they are considered
published (Type “c”)
 May include other sorts of files (e.g. composition for
electronics and orchestra)
NONTEXTUAL DOCUMENTS

Videorecordings
 Example:
OCLC #688159417 (though cataloged as
text with video as supplementary material, from
2010)
 Example: OCLC #69020881 (also text with video
supplement, from 2006)

Sound files
 No
examples found where sound file was principal
element
WU WORKFLOW
Guidelines for students submitting ETDs
(http://library.wustl.edu/services/thesisguideli
nes.html)
 Students submit to WU (theses) or to ProQuest
(dissertations)

 Submission
instructions require student to login
with WUSTL Key (one-stop username and
password)
WU WORKFLOW
Theses go directly to the WU ETD Repository
(part of the Digital Library)
 Dissertations go to UMI, who sends them back
to WU for ingest into the repository
 Metadata is created within the digital library
using Oxygen and MARCEdit, then sent to the
cataloging unit

WU WORKFLOW
The records are loaded into an OCLC Connexion
local save file
 Constant data is applied to records one by one
 Records are manually edited for content,
capitalization, punctuation, filing indicators, added
entries
 Records are contributed to OCLC at Level K (WU
does not assign subject headings to theses and
dissertations except for music)

SOME RESOURCES (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)

http://platinum.ohiolink.edu/dms/catstandards/e
td.pdf


http://www.libs.uga.edu/catalog/etd_summary.pd
f


OhioLINK standard, dating from 2007
U. of Georgia policy which seems to presume that EDTs
will all be reproductions
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/GailsCCQarticle.ht
ml

Publicly available copy of 1995 article by Gail McMillan
on ETD cataloging at Uva and Va. Tech
SOME MORE RESOURCES

http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/cataloging/c
atref/eresources/etd.html#geninfo
 Penn

http://www.digital-scholarship.org/etdb/
 ETD

State U guidelines
bibliography, dated Nov. 2010
http://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/specialcat
aloging/default.shtm
OCLC guidelines for ETD, sort of
SOME MORE RESOURCES

http://www.ndltd.org/standards/metadata/etdms-v1.00-rev2.html
 Latest
NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses
and Dissertations) guidelines

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/bibco/PNGuide.pdf
 PCC’s
guidelines for provider-neutral bibliographic
records for electronic resources