ETD-Progress

Introduction

Since the UNT Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) project inception in fall 2007, over 3,000 ETDs have transferred to the UNT Libraries' server.  Libraries are well suited for supporting ETD users by integrating ETDs into the existing digital resources. Among other tools and functionalities, the UNT Libraries offer advanced search mechanisms and a number of other added values to enhance ETD use.

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Figure 1: UNT ETDs by types

UNT ETD Collection Size

The number of ETDs at the University of North Texas has grown at a rapid pace. As can be seen from tables 1 and 2, from just one in 1998, the number has grown to more than 3,000 ETDs in 2009. Currently, about 53% of the UNT ETDs are Doctoral dissertations, while the remaining (47%) are Master's theses or Problems in Lieu of Theses. Figure 1 shows the UNT ETDs by types and tables 1 and 2 show lists of breakdowns for the current ETDs (as of May 2009) organized by semester, year, and access level.

Table-1: No. of ETDs by semester (from 1999 to 2009)

Table-2: No. of ETDs by Access Level (from 1999 to 2009)

 Keys to Access Level:

• Public: - These ETDs are open or there are no restrictions on these resources.

• UNT-Community:- Access to these ETDs are restricted to users associated with the University of North Texas. Users are normally required to login using their EUID, if they are located outside UNT campus.

• UNT-Strict:- These ETDs are restricted to UNT Community. This will be strictly enforced and users are always required to login using their EUIDs, regardless of their location.

The Texas Digital Library (TDL)

Founded in 2005, the Texas Digital Library (TDL) is a multi-university consortium dedicated to providing the digital infrastructure to support a fully online scholarly community for institutions of higher education in Texas. Through the establishment of shared policies and standards, forums for professional interaction, expertise in digital collections and preservation, and robust technical services, the TDL aims to increase the availability of the enormous intellectual capital produced throughout Texas universities. (TDL, 2008).

One of the founding aims of the TDL is to share the resources of multiple universities across a common structure. As a member institution, the University of North Texas contributes to one of the TDL’s largest projects, the creation of a digital repository for ETDs produced throughout Texas colleges and universities.

To create shareable metadata and ensure interoperability with TDL members institutions and other aggregators such as the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), the UNT Libraries provide a mapping document for ETD metadata to TDL and NDLTD metadata, which uses a qualified Dublin Core (DC) schema.

Summary

Theses and dissertations represent a wealth of scholarly and artistic content created by masters and doctoral students in the degree-seeking process.  One of the first five American universities to require ETDs for graduation, UNT began accepting theses and dissertations in electronic format in 1998/1999.  Now the UNT Library is considering a digitization project for older (pre 1999) theses and dissertations previously available only in paper form. We are currently in a pilot to establish workflows and timetables. Furthermore, the UNT Libraries intend to identify innovative ways of providing enhanced services to our ETD users worldwide. By doing so, we will continue being instrumental in strengthening UNT's existing reputation and will make progress toward the visions outlined in the global initiatives to bring research works across the world to the public domain.

If you have questions or comments regarding the ETDs project in general, please contact Mark E. Phillips at mark.phillips@unt.edu or Daniel Gelaw Alemneh at daniel.alemneh@unt.edu.