ABCD open source software for managing ETD repositories

Proceedings: Indian Library Association , 2017

In academic/research institutions, the Institutional Repositories (IR) is the primary source to archive scholarly communication containing data, information, photographs and results of valuable research. These are vital and robust systems that allow institutions to preserve and maintain their digital documents and allow for interaction and collaboration among users in the different institutions. There are numbers of digital library software available as "Open Source" as well as "Proprietary". The open source software helps the libraries especially in eliminating vendor lock-in and reducing the cost with greater flexibility. These software are generally available free of cost with the capability to capture, store, index, preserve and redistribute all scholarly research materials in digital formats. This paper deals with open source software (OSS) solutions especially DSpace, EPrints, Greenstone, Fedora projects and others for establishing institutional repository (IR). These OSS have developed a system that allows users to use and submit the contents for IR, and also allows the administrators to organize, configure and customize the IR accordingly to the requirements. The primary attempt of this paper is to discuss the implementation of IR with special reference to Odiya Books & Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) in Central Library of National Institute of Technology Rourkela (NITR). An attempt has been made to showcase the implementations of various OSS tools and usage ranking of these websites with the help of screenshots.

ETDs can contain non-text elements such as multimedia, sound, video, and hypertext links. This enables scholars worldwide to locate, search, and download ETDs. For most scholars, the the Ph.D thesis and M.phil dissertations are the first major work of scholarship they produce. To make those works more readily available to other scholars, as well as to save money, many universities and libraries are now making digitized (or electronic) versions available. The Shodhganga@INFLIBNET is set-up using open source digital repository software called DSpace developed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in partnership between Hewlett- Packard (HP). The DSpace uses internationally recognized protocols and interoperability standards. Shodhganga provides a platform for research scholars to deposit their Ph.D. theses and make it available to the entire scholarly community in open access. An attempt has been made to determine the present status of participating Indian Universities in Shodganga.

The International Information & Library Review, 2009

The paper examines the developments in the ETD scene, in particular PhD thesis repositories in India. The purpose is to do a preliminary study and explore the possibilities for creating a national repository for the deposit, discovery, use and long-term care of research theses in an open access environment. The author looks at the current state of deployment of ETD repositories in the academic sector and discusses the subject coverage, number of items, access policy, browse/search option, value added services etc. Despite several limitations, this exercise is valuable and resulted in interesting and thought-provoking information. It certainly raises questions about policies and strategies that national higher education, research funding and policy-making bodies, as well as individual institutional communities within the higher education sector will want to consider. In spite of great interest for e-thesis development and majority of doctoral students in India get their theses produced electronically, no wide scale activity is initiated by government in terms of the storage and dissemination of these materials. Furthermore, adoption of national-level policies on institutional repository development is lacking in India. Till date very few institutes request students to submit electronically their theses and dissertations. This article proposes the construction of a reservoir of extensive doctoral research and an Indian portal, to enable preserving of scientific and technological research materials in the country and a global view of Indian institutional research assets. Few national level institutes like Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institute of Technologies have established ETD repositories and few are at the planning stage. The survey has revealed that digital preservation of Theses and dissertation are already in progress, though some of them are still in a novelty stage. The major problems and concerned reported by respondents are summarized and findings are discussed.

Indian universities play a vital role in generation and dissemination of knowledge by conductingresearch works and producing theses & dissertationsthat area unique source of information& knowledge. Every year, about8,000-10,000 PhDs are being awarded in India. The purpose of these theses and dissertations are to provide an experience to students, researchers, scholars, which will be of enduring value tounderstanding how new knowledge is acquired and communicated within the required field. Those works contain valuable literature reviews and details on research, which are not generally made available elsewhere. The Indian theses and dissertations are faced with many problems like lack of systematic acquisition, lack of access, uncertain publication practice, enormous growth in the number of theses etc. In western countries, these problems were addressed already and serious attempts have been made to solve them. In North America, less than 5% of all accepted dissertations and masters' theses are initially conceived of and executed as electronic documents. In India modern information and communicationtechnology (ICT) acts as an effective intervener role in shifting from closed access theses and dissertations to open access electronic theses &dissertations (ETD). The University Grant Commission of India has an important role in facilitate electronic forms of theses & dissertations time to time by their regulations such as the UGC (Submission of metadata and full-text of doctoral theses in electronic format) Regulations, 2005 and UGC (Minimum standards and procedure for award of M.Phil. /Ph.D. Degree) Regulation, 2009.This paper will highlights the current status of electronic version of theses &dissertations in Indian University libraries as well as atnational level ETD Repository called the SHODHGANGA. The open access systems of electronic theses & dissertations will make easy to collect required information and knowledge with savingvaluable time, increase the rate of research with high quality, all academic communities will get their benefits as well as acts as commodity sources which will generate revenue for Government of India by its dissemination.

2016

The paper discusses in brief the initiatives taken by the University libraries in Assam for creating digital archives and examines how ETDs are of great significance to students, researches as well as faculty members. It highlights how the ETDs in the University Libraries of Assam are yet to develop in the truest sense of them.The paper alsoexamines in this regards the issues and challenges regarding the setting up of ETD Repositories. Finally some suggestions are highlighted for overcoming such challenges.

2020

The purpose of this study is to investigate the development of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) repositories in university libraries located in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) and Rawalpindi (twin cities), Pakistan. A semi-structured web-based questionnaire was developed and distributed among all 35 university libraries located in the twin cities of Pakistan. SPSS version 21 was used for analysis of data. It was found that out of 35, 13 (37.14%) university libraries had developed their ETDs repositories. DSpace was the most used software and vast majority had uploaded files in PDF format in their ETDs repositories. Respondents agreed with the 10 key benefits of developing ETDs repositories. However, lack of incentive, motivation, policies and shortage of staff hampered the development of ETDs repositories. It is crucial for the universities to develop ETDs repositories for long-term preservation of their research heritage and to enhance its visibility. It is recommended that university authorities should provide software, hardware infrastructure, financial, and technical support to the libraries for the development of ETDs repositories in the university libraries.

Making the erudite publications accessible through open access and making it more visible to a wider range of audiences across the globe with the help of World Wide Web is the new edged mantra for scholarly communication. This study was undertaken with an attempt to give an abridgment of ETD repositories in India. The chief objective of the study is to find out the development and current status of Indian ETD repositories. The current study depicts the importance of ETD Repositories in the technology driven era especially in developing countries like India. It was found that a number of ETD repositories are coming up and a few among them shows a promising future.The study shows that maximum number of Indian ETD repositories has adopted the open source software Dspace for building up the repositories and Shodhganga is leading in terms of the records contained in the ETD repository

2014

Electronic resources have been a key issue for the University of Malta Library (UoML) in the last few years within the context of the library transformation/evolvement into a hybrid one. The Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) project was introduced at the UoML in the year 2007. Initially such theses and dissertations were made available to students on selected workstations at the Melitensia department. With around 3,000 ETDs and an increasing demand for wider accessibility of such intellectual property, the UoML is currently working to implement a repository whereby such theses and dissertations would be available for University of Malta (UoM) registered students via username and password. The purpose of this long essay is to study and present the main issues associated with the implementation of an institutional repository at the UoM, in relation to ETDs. Interviews and studies of four foreign universities were used to gather the findings.

2017

Reports the designing and development of an open access (OA) institutional digital repository (IDR) model (BURA-Burdwan University Research Archive) using DSpace software (http://www.dspace.org/). Describes various steps involved in administering DSpace like creating and maintaining Communities, Sub-communities and Collections under community/sub-community etc. Also demonstrates different steps involved in submission process and proposes incorporation of subject access system (here DDC-Dewey Decimal Classification) in IDR system to fulfill the subject approach of the users.

2012

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), as a new generation of scholarship resources, are gradually increasing in number and quality at higher academic institutions. Meanwhile, by introducing various types of software solutions for managing Institutional Repositories (IRs), selection of appropriate solutions has become a timeconsuming process for institutions. The goal of this paper was to appraise 59 features of three widely utilized open source IR solutions (DSpace, EPrints, Fedora) from the perspective of managing ETDs, via an in-depth evaluation of their important functionalities in this regard. For this purpose, all applications were installed and the features were tested in a test-bed environment (a benchmark machine) with a predefined set of ETD collections and registered users. Findings related to assessment of each feature were presented in the tabular format. Our comparison indicated that, although all three solutions are capable of managing ETD systems, in most of the comparative areas that are vital for an ETD repository DSpace was ahead of EPrints and Fedora.