Dear cni-announce subscribers:
Many of your institutions have active electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) programs, but you may still seek information on best practices in areas such as file formats, metadata, and version control. Our colleagues at Educopia have facilitated the development of ETD Guidance Briefs and are inviting the community to review and comment on these items by June 30, 2016.
--Joan Lippincott, CNI
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Greetings,
If you have interest or involvement in ETD programs, please consider taking a look at these ETD documents and tools and evaluating them:
Preserving and Curating ETD Research Data and Complex Digital Objects, Guidance Briefs Available for Public Review and Use - (May 3-June 30, 2016)
The ETDplus project (https://educopia.org/research/grants/etdplus) invites Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) program staff, librarians, faculty advisors, and graduate students to participate in a public review of the Guidance Briefs for Preserving & Curating ETD Research Data & Complex Digital Objects.
About the ETD Guidance Briefs:
The Guidance Briefs are short (3-4 page) "how-to" oriented briefs designed to help ETD programs build and nurture supportive relationships with student researchers. These briefs will assist student researchers in understanding how their approaches to data and content management impact credibility, replicable research, and general long-term accessibility: knowledge and skills that will impact the health of their careers for years to come.
Review (and Use!) the Guidance Briefs:
Interested ETD stakeholders can download copies of the Guidance Briefs at the following website, https://educopia.org/deliverables/etdplus-guidance-briefs . The Guidance Briefs cover the following topics:
1. Copyright
2. Data Structures
3. File Formats
4. Metadata
5. Storage
6. Version Control
We are releasing these Briefs--both during this initial public review phase and after they are refined--as openly editable documents. We want institutions to use and reuse these in whatever way works for their local audiences. Each Brief includes generally applicable information about its topic, and also includes a "Local Practices" section that an institution may use to call attention to what's happening on its own campus.
We invite you to help us refine these documents by drawing our project team's attention to any components that need to be edited, revised, broadened, or narrowed. Please send us an email with your suggestions and/or track your changes within the documents and email those back to us at the addresses below by or before June 30, 2016. We plan to integrate the community's feedback before formally issuing these Briefs under a CC BY 4.0 license later this summer.
If you have any further questions about the Guidance Briefs or about the ETDplus project, don't hesitate to reach out to us:
Katherine Skinner, Principal Investigator (katherine@educopia.org)
Sam Meister, Co-Principal Investigator (sam@educopia.org)
Courtney Vukasinovic, Administrative Coordinator (courtney@educopia.org)
About the ETDplus Project:
The ETDplus project is helping institutions ensure the longevity and availability of ETD research data and complex digital objects (e.g., software, multimedia files) that comprise an integral component of student theses and dissertations. The project is generously funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and led by the Educopia Institute, in collaboration with the NDLTD, HBCU Alliance, bepress, ProQuest, and the libraries of Carnegie Mellon, Indiana State, Morehouse, Oregon State, Penn State, Purdue, University of Louisville, University of Tennessee, the University of North Texas, and Virginia Tech.
Best regards,
Martin Halbert (Ph.D., MLIS)
UNT Dean of Libraries and Associate Professor