Electronic Theses and Dissertations Roundtable

Rose Nelson, the Alliance's Systems Librarian, began the roundtable with introductions. Rose is coordinating all the roundtables for the Alliance. Jessica Colati, Project Director for the Alliance Digital Repository, introduced herself. She said there were lots of different ETD needs from institutions, and noted that many of the ETD ADR Working Group were in attendance; she said for those attending who weren't part of the ADR group, feel free to contact any member of the ADR ETD Working Group if you have questions.

John Culshaw, Interim Associate Dean for Administrative Services from CUB Libraries, said the library has been accepting ETDs since 2004. CUB started working with ETDs first on a voluntary process, and quickly moved to requiring electronic versions of theses and dissertations. They have required students to submit their thesis/dissertation in electronic format for two years now. CUB uses ProQuest. The student submits the submission form to ProQuest, and CU receives a preprint copy of the thesis/dissertation from ProQuest when the thesis or dissertation is published. The preprint version currently goes into dark storage. CUB is exploring ways to work with ProQuest to deposit the preprint version directly into the ADR.  ProQuest sends CUB K-level MARC records every 6 months. They no longer accept any thesis or dissertation in print or micro format. The MARC records are loaded into the CUB online catalog, Chinook with a link that points to ProQuest. This creates a problem for ILL, since they ETDs are not open access. Suzanne Larsen, Faculty Director of Math, Physics and Earth Sciences Libraries CUB, introduced herself. Suzanne said the K-level MARC records are upgraded to include department information. Modifications are made before going live. Yem Fong, Associate Professor and Head of Collection Development UCB, said CUB has guidelines for submission and process, and do not currently submit undergraduate theses. The cost is steep to do retrospective theses and dissertations. ILL currently prints the electronic thesis or dissertation and sends it, but they don't do them very often. They are not allowed to send an electronic copy of the file because that is ProQuest's copy. When the ETDs are submitted to the ADR, CUB can provide preprints with an open access license. CUB would like to eventually include undergraduate theses as part of their scholarship initiative. CU students can access all CU ETDs. They are not currently getting permission for retrospective T & Ds.
 
Helen Reed, Associate Dean of UNC Libraries, heard of a different process some institutions are using to pursue permission for retrospective T & Ds to be included in the ETD process: an institution notifies alumni via a newsletter or other communication if they don't want their T or D in the repository, to notify the institution. If there is no contact, the institution assumes permission is granted. ProQuest provides an open access option with an additional fee of $95 to the student, but the institution does not get notification of this. The ProQuest rep told her they can capture any dissertations, but they're not open access.
 
Ellen Greenblatt, Auraria's Associate Director for Access, Collections and Technical Services, gave an update on their ETD status. Their institution includes Metropolitan State College of Denver, Community College of Denver, and the University of Colorado at Denver Downtown Campus (UCD DDC). Ellen said they were pretty far behind in the ETD process. The consolidation process (between UC Denver and UCHSC) has made things more complicated and they recently hired a new director at the Auraria library.  The consolidated UCD shares one Graduate School although at this point it appears to still be functioning separately on each campus. 

Auraria's sister library is the Health Sciences Library on the UCD Anschutz Medical Campus (UCD AMC).  The HSL does not yet accept Ds or Ts in electronic format.  The Health Sciences Library uses ProQuest for print Ds and Ts.  Masters theses don't go to ProQuest. If the HSL receives more than one print copy, the second copy goes to archives and the first copy circulates. They do original cataloging with full subject analysis for all Ds and Ts. The Health Sciences Library wants to continue to work on this and learn from everyone's experiences.
Carol Steward, Thesis and Dissertation Specialist in the Graduate School and International Admissions at UNC (also known as the "ruler lady"), works from the student's side.  Joan Lanborn, Head of Administrative Services, is in charge of UNC library's collections. UNC is currently having exploratory conversations and would like to implement a pilot to use the ProQuest Administrator software. Right now the library requires two paper copies and a microfiche copy. Helen Reed said she had learned that ProQuest digitizes from the microfilm rather than the digital file, leaving concerns that supplemental material is lost. UNC wants to get ETDs into the repository; it's important to streamline the process, improve the quality and capture supplemental material. Their library maintains a copy of T & D in the stacks, which is especially important for ILL. They also maintain a copy in archives. She noted that students are having some trouble getting copies of dissertations.

There was a discussion about obsolete file formats and concerns with long term preservation.  The group was also concerned about dead web links in T & D, although that concern is not exclusive to ETDs.

Greg Colati, Digital Initiatives Coordinator for DU's Penrose Library, said that they will require all T & Ds to be in digital format for the winter quarter. They began with undergraduate studies and have accepting ETDs on a voluntary basis this quarter. They are currently using the ProQuest ETD Administrator. Access is through ProQuest, sent through the Alliance. The Alliance is testing theses through DU and dissertations through CUB. Jessica circulated copies of XML metadata from both institutions; she asked roundtable participants not to share the metadata.  When DU contributes ETDs into the ADR, the DU library's assumption is that there will be open access through the ADR unless it is restricted by the student. Greg said their Graduate Studies program would have to tell them about restrictions. The Virginia Tech form has the option to restrict XLM records automatically loaded into the ADR. The process that provides viewing restriction needs to be worked out. PEAK (DU's online catalog) will provide links to both the ADR and ProQuest. Greg said that DU Graduate Studies loves the new ProQuest ETD Administrator process. The department can still request a paper copy, although the library will not house any copies. DU has also begun digitizing retrospectively, but the T & Ds are only available through ProQuest. Their local copy is in PDF color format  as submitted. With other file formats, the ADR will deliver the file via bitstream, but will not necessarily provide the player. Greg said that the library will promise to maintain and migrate to certain types of files. Preservation is part of their provided level of service.

Dawn Paschal, Coordinator for Digital Repositories Services at CSU, said it was her understanding that the graduate school approves the ETD submission as part of a queuing process via the ETD Administrator software. Submitted content is always hosted on a ProQuest server, although the grad school can design approval/workflow steps.

Yem Fong said that the voluntary pilot that was done with the grad school first worked well.

Jessica introduced Ed Fugikawa, recently hired ADR programmer. She invited Ed to the meeting so he could get a sense of the ETD landscape and to understand and gain some perspective with ETDs.
 
Diana Sweany, Electronic Services Librarian, explained that Regis U. has required theses and final projects to be in electronic format for approximately four years. Regis does not have the ProQuest software, and all scanning, processing and cataloging is done by hand in the library.  She cautioned institutions who are new to ETDs to clearly define policies, staffing and workflows before implementing any new program. The library processes approximately 100 theses a year; Regis has three colleges, several departments have their own workflow and release forms.  Often ETDs are not priority work, and can sometimes sit for a while before processing is completed. Regis would like to contribute ETs and Final Projects into the ADR using an interface that is similar to the ProQuest ETD Administrator. One possibility is to use the VTLS Valet software.
 
Emily Epstein, Cataloging Librarian at the Health Sciences Library of UCD AMC, introduced herself.
 
Rita Hug, Head of Technical Services with UCCS, is the "ruler lady". The grad school is in transition; they have a new dean who is sorting things out. She believes they still have a lot of work to do. Right now they do not accept any electronic submissions; all masters' theses are in print.

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian, is with CC. They have a few masters students, and do not use ProQuest. They are hoping to go the ADR submission route.

Dawn Paschal, Digital Services Coordinator at CSU, says they currently have a print T & D program. They will do an electronic pilot next semester. The library no longer wants to accept print submissions because they are out of space! They will use an ETD MS metadata record. Right now CSU has a small # of electronic submissions. They are looking seriously at using the ETD Administrator.

Louise Treff-Gangler, Head of Reference Services at Auraria, introduced herself.

Melissa DeSantis, Deputy Director of the Health Sciences Library at UCD AMC, introduced herself.

CSM's Laura Guy and Patricia Anderson introduced themselves. Laura is CSM's Systems Librarian and Patricia is Public Services Librarian and Head of Circulation.  Patricia said they require three paper-based copies and a microfiche copy. CSM does not use ProQuest. They sell their theses, and have great demand for them. There is a concern that the microfiche copy is not in color. They do original cataloging with MARC records. Laura said they have experimented with the ADR. They are considering whether or not CSM would like to go open access eventually-they seem to be divided on this issue. Some people still want the option to sell them. CSM does have a lot of ILL requests for their theses.

Jessica Colati talked about the ADR's Metadata and ETD working groups. Right now, the groups are working on discovery access, storage, open and controlled access. There will be a Shibboleth meeting on Friday, and the Alliance is hosting several investigatory roundtables.  Each ADR participant will start with .8 terabytes of storage, and the institution can purchase additional storage if needed. The ADR is set up as a ftp destination for PDF and XML documents. ProQuest sent us their DTDs so we can understand what their proprietary codes are, transform their document and map it to MODS as a normalized document. Member institutions are using other metadata schemas, but MODS is the display and access point. This is modeled after the University of Texas, and also in part from Virginia Tech. Batch loading /workflow for ETD Administrator is now occurring; we are investigating possible interfaces regarding ETDs for non-ProQuest sites including VTLS Valet or the current FEZ environment. We want to replicate the ProQuest experience for non-ProQuest sites. The data is returned from the ADR via a bitstream, which means the client must have a viewer. Currently the ADR has origami, an image viewer.

We are looking into GIS now. The ADR is an OAI provider-data can be harvested into the III Encore environment, OISTER and other applications. The staging site is current. We need to provide an aggregator for records and attached files that are open access. This is similar to ProQuest process of harvesting and producing records; it would be presented as results at each institution. The ADR also supports dark archiving.

Suzanne Larsen noted that the education process is important in explaining free and open access to students submitting ETDs.

Jessica noted that MIME, PREMIS, and JOBE (sp?) record types can be input into the ADR and are returned via bitstream. The ADR is looking at I-Paper and Open Office as viewer possibilities as well. There was a discussion about different file types being submitted in current ETDs. TIFF, JPEG, XML, streaming video (WAV) files can all be input into the ADR, although the client would be ultimately responsible for tools to view/listen to them.  PDFA file type differs from PDA in that it has more embedded metadata at the instructional and metadata level.

Helen Reed asked CUB in they were requiring students to submit only PDF files or if ProQuest accepted Word files and other formats. UCHSC said they have PDF software loaded on their computers, allowing students to convert their files to PDF. Regis allows students to submit theses in Word, and the library converts their files to PDF.  At CUB, signature pages are kept separately at the grad school, they are not kept with the submission.

The meeting was adjourned approx. 11:45 a.m.