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Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) @ NC

State

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Where are we in the process? Effective Fall 2002 semester, ETD

became a University requirement for all graduate students at NC State (both masters and doctoral).

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Where are we in the process? While some students may print paper

copies of their work as a personal preference or at the behest of the chair of their committee, 100% of all theses and dissertations are now submitted online to the Graduate School and electronically stored in the NC State Libraries’ on-line collection.

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Where are we in the process? Since full-implementation over

1,200 electronic scholarly works have been successfully processed.

During the twelve month period ending yesterday 730 ETDs have been successfully processed.

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Where are we in the process? NC State’s ETDs can be accessed

via the World Wide Web. People can link directly to students’ ETDs or link to NC State’s ETD collection at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/.

Commercial search engines also have access to released ETDs.

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Where are we in the process? NC State is a member of the

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertation (NDLTD)

Researchers can search and browse NC State’s ETD collection, as well as the collections of other NDLTD members, on their Web site: http://www.ndltd.org/.

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How Did We Get Here?

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Definition of an ETD

Explains the research or scholarship of a graduate student

Expressed in a form simultaneously suitable for machine archives and worldwide retrieval.

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Identify Similarities to its paper predecessor (part 1): Figures, tables, footnotes, and

references. Title page with the authors' name,

the official name of the university, the degree sought, and the names of the committee members.

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Identify Similarities to its paper predecessor (part 2): Documents the author's years of

academic commitment. Describes why the work was done,

how the research relates to previous work as recorded in the literature, the research methods used, the results, the interpretation and discussion of the results, and a summary with conclusions.

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Identify how ETD is different Technologically advanced medium for

expressing ideas. Can incorporate advanced multimedia

objects (audio, video, animations, databases, spreadsheets, simulations, hypertext links, etc.).

Consume virtually no library shelf space At the author’s choice, they can be available

to anyone that can browse the World Wide Web.

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Identify Advantages of ETD Helps students learn about electronic document

preparation and about digital libraries. Helps prepare students for a future

role in the Information Age, whether they teach, research, or use the research results of others.

Better convey the message of a thesis or dissertation in an electronic as opposed to a paper document.

More economical recording and archiving because of electronic workflow.

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Life Cycle

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Develop a Vision Statement contribute to worldwide graduate

education and research as we build a Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) in collaboration with other scholarly institutions.

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Develop Goals and Objectives Help students learn about electronic

publishing and digital libraries –improve graduate education

Help graduate students in their career Help other learners and researchers Make available many works that are

now "lost" (e.g., theses that lead to no other publications and that only are available through inter-library loan)

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Scale up to the next level by adopting a strategy to achieve widespread use of ETD Pre-announced future “required”

date – Fall 2002 for all Theses and Dissertations

Consider implementing mass or as-needed back scanning

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Make a Recommendation: to Adopting a strategy for Promotion, Orientation, Education, Training & Support Publish ETD brochure Improve author support resources Expand scope of and publicity for

ETD workshops

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Make a Recommendation: Improve NC State ETD submission infrastructure and workflow Implement ETD software upgrade

from Virginia Tech WRAP ETD submission process in

Unity security Increase licenses for Adobe Acrobat

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Make a Recommendation: Develop system of metrics on ETD Track downloads from NC State University

ETD archive site Implement hit counter per ETD Expand the on-line authors exit survey to

add questions about ETD Track ETD availability statistics

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High Level Keys to success Recognize ETD doesn’t just happen Sell ETD not as a one-time, one-

shot deal but as a an entrée’ into a lifetime of self-publishing

Build a consortium of high-level sponsors on campus

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Business Case : Critical Elements Graduate students allowed wide

flexibility in determining the content and format of their work.

Review and Library cataloging standardized across campus

No explicit written or verbal ETD policy, rule or regulation that either requires or prohibits a particular format of documents that can accompany an ETD (digital videos, audio recordings, etc.)

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Business Case : Critical Elements Authors must follow graduate school

style standards but the Thesis Editor exercises wide latitude of judgment in these matters.

Hands-on workshops (Most authors will not attend workshops but rather manage the creation and submission process by themselves.)

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Business Case : Critical Elements Authors must follow graduate school

style standards but the Thesis Editor exercises wide latitude of judgment in these matters.

Hands-on workshops (Most authors will not attend workshops but rather manage the creation and submission process by themselves.)

Set up a website etd.ncsu.edu

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Business Case : Critical Elements Authors given the unquestioned

option of choosing from various time periods for delay of complete release for public access due to possible copyright concerns but all authors must submit electronically in order to have work reviewed by the Graduate School and eventually be cleared to graduate.

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Business Case : Critical Elements Our rather long "pilot" phase on this

project gave us ample opportunity to learn and prepare for any and all problems and complications of running a production scale system. No special managerial level effort is now required for ETD to operate. This experience is paying dividends now in terms of a low level of headaches.

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Business Case : Critical Elements Graduate School strong leadership

role in promoting and guiding the implementation of the project from day one.

Thesis Editor involvement from the outset

A standing ETD committee of faculty and students

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Business Case : Critical Elements Listen very carefully to the

committee, cautiously assess the relevance of all concerns and used innovative thinking to avoid allowing unanswered questions to create major delays.

Address minor problems as you progress from pilot to production.

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Business Case : Critical Elements Academic debate along the way:

copyright, lack of hard copy on file, concerns over possible difficulty experienced by student authors

Graduate school and the Library must address all concerns.

Some concerns turn out to be non-issues The ETD system can be implemented with

little directly related increases in computing resources or staff in either the Graduate School or the Libraries.