Searching
ETDs (at SILS and universally)
Brad
Hemminger, 5/7/04
As many of
you are aware, we have developed a digital library
here at SILS
to hold the electronic versions of our Master's Papers
and
dissertations. Electronic theses and
dissertations are referred
to as
ETDs. The digital library at SILS for
ETDs is called
"SILS-ETD". As before, paper copies are maintained by
the SILS
library. We are trying to make these SILS products
(our theses and
dissertations)
very visible and easily accessible. There
are
multiple
ways to access these materials. I have
summarized them
below for
your information. One of the exciting
recent changes is
that our
Master's Papers are even more visible, being accessible
through free
and universally available search interfaces that
harvest Open
Archives Initiative digital repositories like ours, and
by search
engines like Google, which have indexed the full-text
papers. The first week after we'd set up full-text
searching, one
of my
students received an email from a student in Australia who had
discovered
her master's paper, and was excited about how relevant it
was to their
research work.
For now we
just have Master's Papers incorporated, so I will only
address
them. There are multiple mechanisms,
described below, for
searching
the metadata, and as well as the full text.
The UNC
campus is
planning to migrate to electronic theses and dissertations
in about 2
years. Our digital library (SILS-ETD)
at SILS is playing
an important
role as the test-bed for the UNC campus.
SILS-ETD has
provided
valuable experience for the campus planning group before it
embarks on
ETDs campus-wide. More information on
ETDs can be found
at
http://ils.unc.edu/bmh/etd.
Searching
ETDs:
For metadata
searches of our Master's Papers, the gold standard is
the SILS
Library interface. The database
contains citation records
for SILS
Master's Papers from 1963 onwards, and full-text electronic
versions
beginning with 1999 forward. The library exports the
metadata,
making the information available through sources such as
Library
Literature. This resource is available
via the Davis
Library (http://eresources.lib.unc.edu/eid/list.php?letter=L ), and
most public
libraries have access through NCLive.
One can also
directly
search the SILS-ETD digital archive which holds the papers
(Master's
Paper are publicly available as soon as they are approved
by our
school). SILS-ETD contains papers from
spring 2004 forward.
The SILS
Library database contains the same information, and has
been vetted
by the Library staff, so is a better choice for
searching by
metadata. A more global search of all
publicly
available
ETDs (including ours) can be done via the Networked
Digital
Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD).
An even more
global
search is possible via an Open Archives Initiative compliant
harvester. These would have access to ETDs (most are
published via
OAI now) as
well as all other OAI publicly published materials. A
local
example is my research lab's NeoRef search interface, and a
more
polished example is the University of Michigan's OAIster.
For
full-text searching, standard Google searches include our
Master's
Papers. To search only our Master's
Papers, however, I
recommend
using the full-text Google search we've setup that limits
the search
to just our SILS electronic theses and dissertations
(from 1999
forward).
Full Text
Searches:
SILS-ETD: http://etd.ils.unc.edu/fulltext
(uses Google)
Metadata
searches:
SILS
Library: http://ils.unc.edu/mpi/
SILS-ETD: http://etd.ils.unc.edu:8080/dspace/
NDLTD: http://rocky.dlib.vt.edu/~etdunion/cgi-bin/index.pl
(OCLC Union Catalog, universal ETDs)
NeoRef:
http://neoref.ils.unc.edu/search/index.jsp
(universal OAI repositories)
OAIster: http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/
I'd like
recognize Mao Ni, Jackson Fox, Trish Losi, Marisa Rameriz,
Lucia Zonn,
Rebecca Vargha, and Scott Adams for their contributions
to this
project. The students were funded by
CRADLE fellowships and
the NeoRef
project. Contact Dr. Hemminger if
you're interested in
research in
this area.