Opening cultural heritage in the age of OAI-PMH: finding Armenia in the OATD discovery service
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-09-2013-0091 |
| Date | 03 June 2014 |
| Published date | 03 June 2014 |
| Pages | 320-328 |
| Author | Charles Joseph Greenberg |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,HR in libraries |
Opening cultural heritage in the
age of OAI-PMH: finding Armenia
in the OATD discovery service
Charles Joseph Greenberg
Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University,
New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Abstract
Purpose – Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) distinguishes itself from other ETD
databases by providing immediate access to theses that are freely available online. The Republic of
Armenia is a small geographical area in Central Asia with a population of only three million, yet an
estimated total of five to seven million people of Armenian ancestry live outside of Armenia. What
knowledge of Armenian cultural heritage can be discovered by se arching OATD for open access theses
that relate to Armenian history and culture?. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach – The OATD database was searched for the terms Armenia or
Armenian. Discovered thesis records were exported into citation management tools and analysed for
subject content, year of publication, institutional repository source, and a determination of whether
Armenia was a primary or secondary topic. Access to theses was also tested to verify their open
access. The remaining thesis records (n¼152) were exported into an Excel spread sheet for numerical
analysis and graphic production.
Findings – From the records getting enhanced metadata (n¼152), slightly more (52 per cent) were
master’s theses. Nearlytwo-thirds (63 per cent) used the Republic and culture of Armenia as a primar y
theme. English was the predominant author language (85 per cent) with Portuguese and French
represented less than 5 per cent. World history and social sciences research were the most represented
subjects. Most open access theses on Armenia or Armenian culture date from after 2000. All enhanced
records, along with their abstracts and direct links, are available in a searchable RefWorks
shared folder.
Originality/value – The OATD database was evaluated for scholarly representation of a particular
country and culture.
Keywords Open access, Culture, Armenia, Dissertations, Theses, OATD
Paper type Research paper
Background and objective
Cultural heritage includes tangible, intangible, and natural legacies. ETD s in
institutional repositories are guides to contemporary cultural artefacts that can be
electronically aggregated into searching and discovery platforms.
On 4 April 2013, Thomas Dowling, 2013 of the Wake Forest University Library
announced to the ETD-L discussion list the launch of the Open Access Theses and
Dissertations (OATD) discovery service (http://oatd.org) (Figure 1).
According to the Dowling’s (2013) announcement, OATD “works with each site’s
metadata to index only records that are actually ETDs and are freely available online.
In addition to harvested metadata, it includes a growing amount of full text ‘snippets’
and sample images to help guide searchers (Snippets show search hits only, from about
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-5124.htm
Received 10 September2013
Accepted 16 September2013
Library Management
Vol. 35 No. 4/5, 2014
pp. 320-328
rEmeraldGroup Publishing Limited
0143-5124
DOI 10.1108/LM-09-2013-0091
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 16th International Symposium on Electronic
Theses and Dissertations (ETD), in Hong Kong, on 23-26 September 2013, http://lib.hku.hk/etd2013/
320
LM
35,4/5
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