ETD Guide

Introduction

• What are ETDs
  • ETDs as new genre of documents
• Why ETDs?
  • Minimize duplication of effort
  • Improve visibility
  • Accelerate workflow: graduate more quickly, make ETDs available faster to outside audience
  • Costs and benefits
• Purpose, goals, objectives of ETD activities
  • Helping students be better prepared as knowledge workers
    • Helping students be original
    • Helping students network professionally
  • Improving graduate education, and quality/expressiveness of ETDs
    • Helping faculty
  • Increasing readership of ETDs, communicating research results
  • Helping universities develop digital library services & infrastructure
  • Increasing sharing and collaboration among universities and students
  • Enhancing access to university research
    • Searching
    • Browsing: Classification systems, classification schemes used in different disciplines
    • Well known sites and resources for ETDs
• Brief history of ETD activities: 1987-2007
• Global cooperation in ETD activities
• Overview of rest of the Guide

Universities

• Why ETDs?
  • Reasons and strategies for archiving electronic theses and dissertations
• How to develop an ETD program
  • Scenarios illustrating approaches, schedules and workflow
  • Role of the Graduate School and Graduate Program
  • Role of the Library and Archives
• What are the key concerns and their resolution?
  • Intellectual Property Rights
  • Publishers
  • Human resources and expertise needed for an ETD program
  • Sources for funding
  • Costs
    • Processing charges
    • Budgets
  • Plagiarism
• Assessment and Measurement
  • Introduction
  • Types of Assessment
  • The Assessment and Measurement Process
  • Measuring Production and Use of ETDs: Useful Models
  • Statistics and Usage
  • Measurement in Related Contexts
  • Guidelines for Implementing an Assessment Program for ETDs
  • Student Comments
  • Resources List
• Policy Initiatives: National, Regional, and Local; Discipline specific; Language specific
  • Policy Initiatives: The Case of France
• E-Commerce: fee based methods

Students

• How to learn about ETDs? (workshops, online resources, helpers)
  • Importance of satisfying local requirements
  • Learning from other ETDs
• How to prepare an ETD? (approaches)
  • Overview: writing with word processors and structured editors
  • Writing in word processing systems
    • Microsoft Word and Office 2007
      • Using Style Sheets
      • Using Plug-ins: Bibliography Plug-in
    • Corel WordPerfect
    • LaTeX
    • FrameMaker
  • Writing directly in SGML/XML
  • Preparing a PDF document
    • From LaTeX
  • Preparing for conversion to SGML/XML
    • In MS Word
    • In WordPerfect
    • In LaTeX
    • Checking and correcting
  • Integrating multimedia elements
  • Providing metadata – inside, outside documents
  • Protecting intellectual property and how to deal with plagiarism
• Naming standards: file names; unique Ids
• How to submit your ETD?
  • Local support
  • Typical workflow, local policies and procedures
• Becoming a researcher in the electronic age

Technical Issues

Infrastructure

• Contexts: local, regional, national, global
• Networking
• Seamless access: Open Archives Initiative, federated search

Production of ETDs

• Overview: hardware, software, multimedia, scripts, encoding, document representations/conversions
• Page Description Languages
• Markup Languages
  • XML Software
  • DTDs for ETDs
    • Berlin DTD workshop
  • Support for students to write directly in XML
  • Conversions
    • Conversions from Word, Word Perfect or other RTF-compatible tools to SGML/XML
    • Conversions from LaTeX to SGML/XML
  • Rendering-style sheets
• Metadata, cross walks
• Naming Standards
• Encryption; Watermarking
• Packaging
• Post processing
  • Backups; Mirrors

Dissemination of ETDs

• Identifying: URN, PURL, DOI
• Metadata models for ETDs
• Cataloging: MARC, DC, RDF
• Database and IR
  • Packaged solutions
    • DiTeD and DIENST
    • ADT
    • Cybertheses
    • VT DV and other tools
    • Library Automation/OPAC: VTLS
    • Harvest usage in Germany, France
    • The NDLTD Union Catalog
• Searching
  • Metadata
  • Fulltext
  • SGML/XML Overview
  • SGML/XML and other Markup Languages
  • Multimedia
• Interfaces

Training the Trainers

• Initiatives to support ETD projects in Latin America
• Tool kits for trainers
  • Identifying what is available
• Demonstrations, explanations
  • Initiatives and Projects
  • Guidelines and Tutorials for ETDs
    • Specific Guidelines
• Creating an online database of problem solving solutions
• Help develop a broad local team
• Standards, cooperation, and collaboration
• Outreach/helping others
  • Developing Centres of Expertise where appropriate and helpful

The Future

• Expanding ETD initiatives
• Transforming Graduate Education
• Managing technology changes
• Interoperability
• A vision of the future

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Improving Education and Understanding of NDLTD Paper and data submitted to ETD Symposium '07 by the digital library curriculum development group.

Abstract:

To understand ETDs, what NDLTD is, how it works, and the benefits of NDLTD, it is necessary to educate those involved, such as students who will create and submit their ETDs, as well as the library staff members who will be participating in NDLTD and administering their local system. To help educators prepare digital library (DL) courses supportive of their goals, our DL curriculum group has been developing educational modules and conducting field analyses since January 2006. This paper is a follow-up to our previous study of the subject distribution of ACM DL papers, JCDL papers, and D-Lib Magazine articles. In this paper, we focus on the selected DL modules that might help scholars conduct their research and share their knowledge. The contents are:

• Revised DL educational module framework: Based on our analysis of hundreds of DL papers, we identified 10 core topical areas, and 43 sub-areas. A detailed diagram is provided.
• After discussion, our team selected several DL modules which might be the most relevant to scholars’ research endeavors. Especially, those modules are important to fully utilize ETDs. The module numbers and their descriptions are presented.
• To help scholars navigate and study the corresponding ETD Guide (www.etdguide.org) sections, we mapped the selected DL modules into the Guide sections. The section numbers, titles and starting page numbers are also provided.
• In our previous study, we’ve collected DL course syllabi in the computer science (CS) and the library and information science (LIS) areas. Then the readings were retrieved from the syllabi collections. These readings were classified into the selected DL modules. They are presented here; the complete data can be accessed from our project web site.

Increased understanding about DLs might improve scholars’ research efficiency and effective-ness as well as universities’ participation in NDLTD. We invite the ETD community to assist with module development and evaluation so students, scholars, and staff will know more about DLs.

Resources

• ETD Guide Website
• PDF Version of The Guide for Electronic Theses and Dissertations
• ETD Samples

Authors

• Edward Fox
• Joseph M. Moxley
• Ana Pavani
• Jose H. Canos Cerda
• John Eaton
• Gail McMillan
• Jean-Claude Guedon
• Joan Lippincott
• Suzanne Dolbratz
• Simon Pockley
• Melanie Warfel
• Charles Meyers
• Tony Cargnelutti
• Jose Luis Borbinha
• Nuno Freire
• Anthony Atkins
• Luc Grondin
• Gabriela Ortuzar
• Australian Digital Theses Program
• Universite Montreal
• Universite Lyon 2
• Humboldt-University Berlin
• Ibero-American Science Technology Education Consortium