Katherine Skinner
Martin Halbert
University of North Texas
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Matt Schultz
Gail McMillan
Geneva Henry
Bill Donovan
Xiaocan (Lucy) Wang
Patricia Hswe
Yan Han
Daniel Alemneh
Shannon Stark
University of North Texas
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Virginia Tech
Rice University
Boston College
Indiana State University
Pennsylvania State University
University of Arizona
Katherine Skinner
Martin Halbert
University of North Texas
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Matt Schultz
Gail McMillan
Geneva Henry
Bill Donovan
Xiaocan (Lucy) Wang
Patricia Hswe
Yan Han
Daniel Alemneh
Shannon Stark
University of North Texas
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Virginia Tech
Rice University
Boston College
Indiana State University
Pennsylvania State University
University of Arizona
Increasingly, colleges and universities worldwide are accepting and archiving only electronic versions of their students’ theses and dissertations. While this move from print-based to digital-based theses and dissertations greatly enhances the accessibility and sharing of graduate student research, it also raises grave concerns about the potential ephemerality of these digital resources. How will institutions ensure that the electronic theses and dissertations they acquire from students today will be available to future researchers?
This project aimed to better understand, document, and address the preservation challenges presented by ETDs to ensure that colleges and universities have the requisite knowledge to properly curate these new collections. This project addressed these and other challenges by developing and disseminating guidelines, educational materials, a workshop, and a set of software tools for lifecycle data management and preservation of ETDs.
Click on a section below to explore.
The University of North Texas Libraries (lead applicant) together with the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), the Educopia Institute/MetaArchive Cooperative, and the libraries of Virginia Tech, Rice University, Boston College, Indiana State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Arizona propose to develop and disseminate guidelines, educational materials and an associated workshop, and a set of software tools for life-cycle data management and preservation of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs).
Colleges and Universities have been steadily transitioning from traditional paper/microfilm to digital ETD submission, dissemination, and preservation processes. Increasingly, colleges and universities worldwide are accepting and archiving only electronic versions of their students’ theses and dissertations. While this move from print-based to digital-based theses and dissertations greatly enhances the accessibility and sharing of graduate student research, it also raises grave concerns about the potential ephemerality of these digital resources. How will institutions ensure that the electronic theses and dissertations they acquire from students today will be available to future researchers? We need to better understand, document, and address the preservation challenges presented by ETDs to ensure that colleges and universities have the requisite knowledge to properly curate these new collections.
This project will take place over a two year period from October 2011 to September 2013, and falls within the Advancing Digital Resources category of the IMLS NLG program:
The University of North Texas Libraries (lead applicant) together with the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), the Educopia Institute/MetaArchive Cooperative, and the libraries of Virginia Tech, Rice University, Boston College, Indiana State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Arizona propose to develop and disseminate guidelines, educational materials and an associated workshop, and a set of software tools for life-cycle data management and preservation of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs).
Colleges and Universities have been steadily transitioning from traditional paper/microfilm to digital ETD submission, dissemination, and preservation processes. Increasingly, colleges and universities worldwide are accepting and archiving only electronic versions of their students’ theses and dissertations. While this move from print-based to digital-based theses and dissertations greatly enhances the accessibility and sharing of graduate student research, it also raises grave concerns about the potential ephemerality of these digital resources. How will institutions ensure that the electronic theses and dissertations they acquire from students today will be available to future researchers? We need to better understand, document, and address the preservation challenges presented by ETDs to ensure that colleges and universities have the requisite knowledge to properly curate these new collections.
This project will take place over a two year period from October 2011 to September 2013, and falls within the Advancing Digital Resources category of the IMLS NLG program:
The project team developed and documented software tools to be used as micro-services to assist in ETD lifecycle management.
Micro-services are single-function services that can be used individually or incorporated into existing repository workflows. The tools were openly licensed for use and modification through the University of North Texas Libraries and were distributed freely in late 2014 after a public review period. The accompanying documentation (ETD Lifecycle Management Tools Manual) was freely disseminated under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 license.
PREMIS Event Service is a Django application for managing PREMIS Events in a structured, centralized, and searchable manner.
The purpose of this microservice is to provide a straightforward way to send PREMIS-formatted events to a central location to be stored and retrieved. In this fashion, it can serve as an event logger for any number of services that happen to wish to use it. PREMIS is chosen as the underlying format for events due to its widespread use in the digital libraries/digital archives worlds:
ETD Drop is a Django project+app providing a simple web application for submitting Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs):
The manual is written for ETD Program Managers and other Librarians responsible for accepting and archiving ETDs and related content.
It describes a general rationale and use case for each curation activity mentioned above in the context of an ETD program. While the technical and administrative implementations of ETD programs are diverse, this manual includes generalized recommendations for where and when to deploy the tools in an ETD submission workflow:
The Manual provides resources and instruction for tools in five major areas of lifecycle curation for ETDs, including:
Virus Checking: Submitted ETD’s may contain viruses that could damage the entire collection if not screened in advance. We provide instructions for using ClamAV.
File Format Identification: Knowledge of the formats used in an ETD can help a program determine whether an ETD submission (particularly supplemental files) adheres to program requirements and what software will be necessary to access the data in the future. We provide instructions for using DROID, FITS, JHOVE2 & the Unix file command.
Preservation Metadata: Actions taken during curation should be recorded in order to track their success and failure. We provide instructions for using the new PREMIS Event Service.
ETD Submission: Submissions systems can range from simple to complex, but at their most basic should allow for simple upload, standardized metadata collection, and facilitate on-going ETD workflows into an institutional repository. We provide instructions for using the new ETD Drop application.
Reference Link Archiving: Reference Rot occurs whenever the original version of a linked bibliographic resource is not available any more – a growing problem given that today’s web-based scholarly communication includes links to an increasingly vast range of online materials, including software, datasets, websites, presentations, blogs, videos, scientific workflows and ontologies. We provide instructions for using the new Hiberlink Zotero plugin.
published 30 September 2014
The Lifecycle Management of Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETDs) Workshop consists of a modular set of Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) licensed materials that are available for ETD programs or professional associations to make use of (and adapt) for educating a wide-range of ETD stakeholders.
They can be modified, expanded upon, or scaled back to accommodate full-day or half-day in-person workshops, or even brief virtual webinars. The workshop provides both conceptual and practical information for both the individual professional/practitioner as well as the broader institution to help improve the overall curation and preservation of ETD content.
All Workshop materials are available for download below.
Colleges and universities are steadily transitioning from traditional paper and microfilm to digital formats for the submission and dissemination of graduate theses and dissertations. While this move from print-based to electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) greatly enhances the accessibility and sharing of graduate student research, it also presents significant challenges for the academic libraries that must preserve this digital content.
To promote best practices and to increase the capacity of academic libraries to reliably preserve ETDs, the University of North Texas Libraries, together with Educopia, the MetaArchive Cooperative, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, and the libraries of Virginia Tech, Rice University, Boston College, Indiana State University, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Arizona are pleased to make available the Guidance Documents for Lifecycle Management of ETDs. These documents will be valuable to a range of ETD program stakeholders, including students, university administrators, graduate schools, libraries, campus technical services, and service providers. The documents cover a range of relevant and timely topics:
Table of Contents:
