Who Should Create Metadata for Online Submissions in DSpace I?

Since the Miller Library started to deposit seniors theses in the college digital repository DSpace in 2007, librarians have been wondering who is the appropriate person to create metadata for theses. Ideally, metadata librarians can do this with best knowledge they have. However, most submitted theses need original cataloging. Usually, there is only one metadata /cataloging librarian in a small academic or research library to do this type of original work. The amount of electronic theses received by the library each year is far beyond what a metadata librarian can handle in a timely manner. Especially, the metadata librarian has to design metadata models for different types of electronic collections, and facilitate access for users to easily search information in Dspace. So what are the possible solutions?

At large university libraries, students submit theses and dissertations online. In this submission process, a senior needs to create descriptive metadata for his own work, such as title, author, keywords, abstract, table of contents etc. After the student submits his/her thesis, the metadata librarian will review the submission. If the thesis passes the review, the librarian will publish it right away. If the metadata librarian finds out inappropriate metadata in the submission, s/he will not publish it until errors are fixed.

Building an Institutional Repository for Your Instutution

Institutional repositories (IRs) have been successfully populated at higher education institutions, where users not only get open access to those scholarly publications, but also create collections. It opens the door to share research information within or beyond the community. IRs are also extremely useful at research companies.

Research companies could set up different communities to share information at different levels. This will reduce duplicate paperwork, such as lab reports, lab records and datasheet. It also minimize the requests for the same information, and leads to a green business environment. The easily customized workflow could be designed to facilate researchers to deposit thier data in a moment. IRs could also serve as a platform for record management. The descriptive metadata and administrative metadata can be shared or transferred as a part of management records.

Currently, some open source software, such as DSpace, Greenstone, Fedora, are widely used at academic libraries. The other commercial products, such as CONTENTdm and Inmagic Presto, are also used in business environment. How to create an institutional repository and promote it in your community? The article, Building an Instutional Repository at a Liberal Arts College, might give you some thoughts and inspiration.

Item Mapper in DSpace

Recently, I got several calls to ask how to use the item mapper in DSpace. The item mapper is used to reduce duplicates of the same record, and create an easy way to link the item record across multiple collections in DSpace. For instance, if a photograph by John Lee is collected in the photograph collection, but it also appears in the collection of Arts Department. Then we can use the item mapper to match the same photograph record in the second collection to avoid reproduce an item record in the second collection.

An item mapper is a convenient tool for users to manage records at the item level. However, when a same creator has multiple work in DSpace, and some of work might appear in various collections, then the item mapper becomes problematic. Currently, users can only use the item mapper by searching author name. As I mentioned, if the author has multiple publications in DSapce, how do users recognize the right publication to map the item record without title information?

This extreme situtation has been less considered by DSpace developers. At this point, if such case happhens, users need to label the item record which needs to be mappred in more than one collections. For example, users can create second co-author to tag the publication, then search the collections by the co-author name to identify the record and map it in the according collection. After your mapping is done, users need to go back the record and delete the co-author from the item record. That is how we can temporarily solve the problem. Nevertheless, We still hope that DSpace developers could improve the item mapper with more combined search features.

Metadata Quality Control

Metadata quality control is becoming more important than ever when we deal with batch import. These problems include various versions of author name, unconventional abbreviations, inappropriate data formats, duplicate records, spelling errors, incomplete punctuations, unrecognized characters etc. To control the quality of metadata, we need systematical way to instantly identify and correct those errors; on the other hand, we also need strengthen metadata creation at the beginning.

Recently, DSpace has released an add-on for metadata quality control, which has powerful mass-edit feature, duplicate detection and resolving algorithms. This is a very promising feature for metadata quality control, at least, some systematical methods could be adopted to solve the current dilemma at the time of submission.

Hopefully, those functions, which are available in traditional Integrating Library System, such as, authority control, control vocabulary etc., will be available in Institutional Repository software.

Metadata Harvesting with MarcEdit

Last time, when I harvested DSpace metadata with MarcEdit, it only lasted around 3 minutes. From the test on yesterday, it went well even though I only did a small collection.

It is important to ensure consistent metadata and access to those digital collections, especially during the period of senior seminars. A simple and clear processing manual should be written to train staff or student assistants how to create metadata, publish theses and harvest metadata with MarcEdit. I am also interested in harvesting metadata with other software. I hope I can hear some good news from Claude in Montreal soon!

Presentation at NITLE DSpace User Community Meeting 2008

NITLE DSpace User Community Meeting

NITLE DSpace User Community Meeting was held on June 11-12, at University Peget Sound, Tacoma, WA. All the participating institutions have sent their information professionals at the meeting.

It is a great opportunity for participates to share their best practices and also address their concerns. Topics such as institutional repository, digital collection, metadata creation, DSpace Manakin, marketing DSpace etc. have been fully discussed. Most librarians feel that DSpace provides a great opportunity for institutions to create digital collections and scholarly communication on campus wide, but how to effectively promote it on campus and create value-added collection for research will be the key to succeed. NITLE agrees to continue providing such opportunities to facilitate best practices.

Miller Library Presented Digital Collection of ETDs at CALD Annual Spring Meeting 2008

On April 11, 2008, College Librarian Dr. Ruth Shoge presented Washington College Digital Repository DSpace at CALD (Congress of Academic Library Directors of Maryland) Annual Spring Meeting 2008.

The Congress of Academic Library Directors (CALD) of Maryland is an organization open to library directors in post-secondary institutions in Maryland. Dr. Shoge made a presentation on “ DSpace, a place for senior thesis.” This year, CALD Annual Spring Meeting focuses on digitization and Maryland library digital projects. Presenters from University of Maryland, Towson University and Johns Hopkins University also shared their digital projects.

Dr. Shoge presented the rationale that we chose DSpace as our DdigiTool, and how the librarians made the collection of ETDs available to college community. This is first time Miller Library officially publicizes our digital collection at academic library community.

Building A Digital Repository, Part IV Publicizing Digital Collection

Good product needs to be promoted in an effective way, especially the collection created by the library. We publicize the digital collection on campus wide and beyond the campus. Firstly, we try to join consortium user group meeting to exchange the experience from what we have done. On the other side, I have to convince faculty that this is convenient, accurate and easy-access resource, students will initially taste their
Once we have digital collection on DSpace, we start to promote it. We use campus newspaper ELM, presentations and library instruction to publicize DSpace. We want to faculty and students could actively communicate on DSpace, and facilitate faculty to employ DSpace to manage their scholar research

Building A Digital Repository

Building a digital repository seems a big thing to most of people, but you can always start with something small, concrete and under your control.

We are at a small liberal arts college, apparently, we want to effectively use all resources and provide better services and products for faculty and students. When we started to build the digital repository, we thought we not only provide a virtual place for digital collection, but also create a platform for our faculty and students to demonstrate their works and talents, share their views and promote their academic achievements. What we want to do here is to give each department flexibility to build their own community and collection for each specific disciplinary purpose, eventually, it will be interactive virtual community, which promotes research and scholarship, ultimately, students will have open access to electronic publications for their scholarly communication.

Digital Collection

Archives usually record college history and heritage, which is a valuable source for research and teaching. Digitizing archives is not only a good way to promote college history and culture, but also an effective means to maximize resource sharing globally. We'd better carefully preserve digital collection if we want more people to share the knowledge. Preservation of digital collection is a big challenge today. DSpace can help you handle your concerns at your lowest cost.

DSpace is able to manage images with various types of files, such as JPEG, MPEG, TIFF. Users can preview a thumbnail image when reading metadata. Digitizing archives is a good news for those who usually read archival documents in reading room. Once the digital collection are online available, they could access archives anywhere and anytime. The digital archives can bring you a spectacular experience, establish a stable and valuable source, and trace new findings in your most interesting fields.

Publishing on DSpace

Scholarship is one of the three pillars (teaching, scholarship and service) in college community. Faculty could put up their published and unpublished works on DSpace with control of rights to use. On one hand, it is convenient for faculty to link required reading list with their works, and make collections online searchable, which is an effective way to publicize themselves globally; on the other side, faculty can effectively demonstrate their publications in the class as they need.

Once you set up this connection, it will be well worthy to build up an easily navigated information architecture on DSpace. Faculty can access the collection anytime to trace research progress and interests, and also be reached by other researchers and audience to share their thoughts anytime and anywhere. DSpace exposes your research projects world wide and promote your scholarly publishing more than ever.

Sharing Senior Capstone Experience on DSpace

In summer 2007, we ended the history of collecting print senior theses, instead, senior students at Washington College submitted their electronic copies to Miller Library. This is a big change for both students and faculty. However, this change also incites their creation and my passion to make them online searchable as soon as I can.

We have a great team at Miller Library, we convert various files to PDF firstly. Then I start to create the information architecture on DSpace to hold all kinds of digital objects. Creating metadata for theses is a long process, but also very crucial for users to be able to search the collection online. It is a big challenge for me to validate keywords assigned by author for every single paper, especially without auto-indexing tool, but the process itself is full of fun!

Now you can search SCE collection by author, title, subject and keyword. Professors can demonstrate students with actual theses on DSpace in the class and share their analysis. DSpace is becoming a virtual community for students to conduct interactive learning and research. Is that mazing that technology is changing the world every second?