Morphing metadata: maximizing access to electronic theses and dissertations
| Published date | 07 March 2008 |
| Pages | 41-57 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830810857799 |
| Date | 07 March 2008 |
| Author | Sevim McCutcheon,Michael Kreyche,Margaret Beecher Maurer,Joshua Nickerson |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Morphing metadata: maximizing
access to electronic theses and
dissertations
Sevim McCutcheon, Michael Kreyche and
Margaret Beecher Maurer
Kent State University Libraries, Kent, Ohio, USA, and
Joshua Nickerson
Coutts Information Services, Niagara Falls, New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to describe work at Kent State University Libraries and Media Services
to promote and devise electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) storage at OhioLINK’s ETD Center, to
find efficient methods to represent these unique scholarly materials within the library’s catalog, and to
foster the establishment of state-wide library catalog standards for ETDs.
Design/methodology/approach – A semi-automated process has been devised that extracts
student-supplied metadata already available in the OhioLINK ETD Center to provide almost
instantaneous access to unique resources through the library catalog. A Perl program uses the
OAI-PMH protocol to extract metadata, modifies and enhances the data, and inserts it into the
Innovative Interfaces, Inc. catalog. Significant effort was made to map the data from ETD-MS to
MARC. Catalogers retrieve records for completion and contribute full bibliographic records to OCLC
WorldCat in addition to the local and consortium catalogs.
Findings – The process successfully produces a provisional bibliographic record that is useful
immediately for resource discovery and that can serve as the basis for full cataloging.
Practical implications – This research provides libraries with a method they can adapt locally to
provide provisional level access, full level access, or both, to unique scholarly research.
Originality/value – This research broke new ground regarding the use of a software agent to
repurpose metadata in library catalogs. It also impacted national cataloging standards for ETDs.
Keywords Cataloging, Theses,Digital storage, Academic libraries
Paper type Technical paper
Introduction
Kent State University Libraries and Media Services has been involved since 1999 in
efforts to promote and utilize electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) storage at
OhioLINK’s ETD Center (www.ohiolink.edu/etd), to find efficient methods to represent
these unique scholarly materials within the library’s catalog, and to foster the
establishment of state-wide cataloging standards for ETDs.
OhioLINK, the Ohio Library and Information Network, is a consortium of eighty-six
college and university libraries and the State Library of Ohio. The development of a
centralized electronic theses and dissertations depository is a natural consequence of
OhioLINK’s mission to provide easy access to scholarly information.
ETDs have several advantages over printed theses. Foremost among these is the
greatly increased visibility of graduate students’ research to a wider audien ce.
According to figures from the University of Cincinnati, a typical printed thesis may be
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
Morphing
metadata
41
Received 24 October 2007
Revised 9 November 2007
Accepted 13 November 2007
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 26 No. 1, 2008
pp. 41-57
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378830810857799
used only two or three times during its lifetime. In contrast, one electronic dissertati on
at Virginia Tech was accessed over 9,000 times in one year (University of Cincinnati,
2006). In the future, theses and dissertations are more likely to be digital objects.
Methods must be devised to increase their visibility in library catalogs.
Kent State’s Library’s efforts to preserve and promote access to ETDs have
important implications for libraries eager to find cost-effective methods for the creation
of metadata for library catalogs. It is important that libraries provide access to their
institutions’ unique scholarly contributions. Kent State’s new process is based on
technological advances, established data standards, and readily available OhioLINK
data. It is also a way to foster the representation of theses and dissertations in
OhioLINK libraries’ catalogs, thereby providing access to Ohio’s unique scholarly
contributions.
The process is a semi-automated one that repurposes author-supplied data available
in the OhioLINK ETD Center. A Perl program uses the Open Archives Initiative for
Metadata Harvesting Protocol (OAI-PMH) protocol to extract metadata, modifies and
enhances the data, and inserts it into the Innovative Interfaces, Inc . (III) catalog. This
process provides almost instantaneous access to unique resources through the library
catalog via provisional records that are reasonably complete in the sense that
Cataloging in Publication (CIP) records are reasonably complete. This article will
explain how this was accomplished.
Significant effort has also been made to map the data from ETD-Metada Standard
(ETD-MS) to MARC21. At Kent State, catalogers retrieve provisional records for
completion and contribute full bibliographic records to OCLC WorldCat in addition to
their local and consortium’s catalog. Cataloging standards have been established to
facilitate this work. The development of these standards and the cataloging aspects
that are unique to ETDs are also discussed.
Optional automated support for cataloging ETDs
Multiple methods of metadata generation were examined to create the process, and
determining the benefits and disadvantages of these methods helped determine the
final shape of the Kent State process. Only a truly efficient process would encourage a
wide swath of OhioLINK libraries to provide instantaneous provisional access to ETDs
via their catalogs. For example, cutting and pasting ETD metadata is more efficient
than manually creating records, but not efficient enough. Much could be gained
through the use of macros in OCLC Connexion, but this method does not provide
immediately available provisional records. Another method, using the OCLC metadata
extraction tool, does not provide an automatically generated record that met the
provisional record standards described in this paper.
Providing access to ETDs through the catalog
Although ETDs are accessible to anyone with an internet connection through the
OhioLINK ETD Center, and dissertations are accessible through ProQuest’s UMI
Dissertation Publishing, in reality, discovery by keyword searching on the internet is
successful only when the searcher and the student creating the metadata use the exact
same terminology. Resource discovery can benefit from professional mediation,
particularly regarding typographical and structural errors. While user-supplied
keywords can provide great specificity for serendipitous discovery, controlled
vocabularies serve “...as the bridge between the searcher’s langu ageand the au thor’s
language ...” (Chan, 2000), principally because of the supporting syndetic structure in
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