ETD-Progress

Introduction

Since ETD project inception in fall 2007, over 2700 ETDs have transfered 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 the users that enhance the 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 an even faster pace. From just one in 1998, to more than 2,700 ETDs in early 2008. Figure 1 shows the UNT ETDs by types and tables 1 and 2 show lists of breakdowns for the current ETDs (as of May 2008) organized by semester, year, and access level.

Table-1: No. of ETDs by semester from Spring 1999 to Fall 2007

Table-2: No. of ETDs by Access Level from 1999 to 2007

 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, University of North Texas contribute 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 and other aggregators such as the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), the UNT Libraries provide mapping document for ETD metadata to TDL, Dublin Core (DC) and NDLTD metadata, which uses a qualified Dublin Core schema.

Future Plan

Many of the ETD's users are already accustomed to Web 2.0 type of services. Accordingly the UNT Libraries intended to identify innovative ways of providing enhanced services to ETD users. Among other future enhancements, we will link name authority information into the metadata records to support unique and consistent identification of UNT departments, committee members, and others associated with the works. Additional research efforts include advanced search and browse mechanisms that support the development of Web 2.0 type of services to help our ETD users worldwide.