A National Portal for Canadian Theses

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A National Portal

for Canadian Theses

Sharon Reeves

Manager, Theses Canada

Theses Canada Thèses Canada

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Presentation Overview

• History of Theses Canada

• Mission

• Requirements – National E-Theses Program

• Portal – Phase One

• Phase One Challenges

• Portal – Phase Two

• Phase Two Challenges

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History

• Canadian Theses Service created in 1965

• Name changed to Theses Canada April 1, 2003

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History (continued)

• Original purpose – to microfilm theses and make them more widely available

• Reproduction and sales contracted out to UMI Dissertations Publishing since 1997

• Voluntary program – currently 55 universities participate

• 225,000+ theses in LAC collection

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History

• Titles listed in Canadiana, Canada’s national bibliography

• Catalogue records freely available in AMICUS Web: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca

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Theses Canada Mission

• to acquire, preserve and provide access to a comprehensive collection of Canadian

theses

• to disseminate theses by inter-library loan and sale

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New role – E-theses

• Support Canadian graduate schools during the transition from print to e-theses

• Acquisition and preservation of freely accessible collection of Canadian e-theses at LAC

• Development of capacity for universities to submit e-theses to LAC

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Requirements – National E-theses Program

• Comprehensive national coverage

• Theses digital for entire life cycle; digital version preserved

• Stored in stable digital format, full text searchable

• Minimal number of conversions

• ETD metadata standard used; students supply basic metadata

• Free access from single access point

• No redundancy in workflow

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A National Portal for Canadian Theses

• Portal designed to function as a

comprehensive repository of freely available full text Canadian theses and dissertations

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Portal – Phase 1

Initial content on portal includes:

• Approximately 45,000 full text electronic theses in PDF image format

• Theses processed from 1998 – Aug. 2002

• Catalogue records for all theses in LAC collection (with abstracts when available)

• Information about Theses Canada

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Phase One - Challenges

• Securing the funding for the project

• Technical challenges – getting the e-theses from UMI

• Coordinating the workflow between Theses

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Portal – Phase 2

• Will allow Canadian universities to submit e-theses and metadata directly to LAC

• Analysis of current workflow resulted in identification of basic operational workflow

• E-theses will be sent to LAC via FTP, initially in PDF text, later in XML

• Theses Canada will harvest metadata from

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Portal – Phase 2 (continued)

• Metadata at LAC will be available for harvesting by other organizations, e.g. NDLTD

• Standard student submission template under development

• ETD-ms to MARC format crosswalk

• Pilot project planned for late 2003

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Phase Two Challenges

• Coordination with many universities at

different stages in the transition from print to e-theses

• Dealing with two parallel systems during the transition

• Making changes to internal workflow for theses at LAC

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Digital Preservation

• Needs to be resolved not just for e-theses but for all e-publications

• Canadian universities reluctant to give up preservation quality microfiche

• Theses Canada will continue reproduction

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Mot final

• Theses Canada will continue to provide leadership to meet the goal of acquiring, preserving and providing access to a

comprehensive collection of Canadian theses and dissertations in electronic or microfiche formats