Demonstrating Library Impact Through Acknowledgment: An Examination of Acknowledgments in Theses and Dissertations

Academic libraries are increasingly seeking ways to demonstrate their impact on student learning. Acknowledgments - formal statements of indebtedness – in graduate theses and dissertations provide a rather unexplored area for demonstrating impact of the academic library on student learning. This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to characterize acknowledgments of the Texas A&M University Libraries (TAMU Libraries) in theses and dissertations, both overall and for three disciplines specifically: civil engineering, geography, and history. This study also searched for mentions of the TAMU Libraries throughout the entire body of theses and dissertations. Overall, acknowledgments to the TAMU Libraries in theses and dissertations were less than 1%, though acknowledgments were found in all three disciplines with over a quarter of the history theses and dissertations containing an acknowledgment to libraries. There was no statistically significant difference found between the numbers of acknowledgments in theses versus dissertations. Acknowledgments to the TAMU Libraries were found in the theses and dissertations of 28 different departments. Mentions to the TAMU Libraries – not necessarily a formal acknowledgment – were found throughout the text of theses and dissertations with most concentrated in the acknowledgment, method, and bibliography sections.     

从“一次用尽”看博硕士学位论文的再发表

分析博硕士学位论文的上网入库和再发表牵涉到的一系列相关问题。认为:根据《著作权法》对公开发表的界定,博硕士论文答辩后的缴存或者商业性开发是公开发表,但是对博硕士论文的合理使用以及授权并不是出版,其再发表不适用"一次用尽"原则;博硕士研究生应积极配合公益缴存以及合法机构的商业性开发;为充分发挥博硕士学位论文的学术价值,应鼓励其再发表。     

Spreading the ETD Gospel: A Southern Africa Perspective

Rhodes University mounted its first digital thesis on the World Wide Web in 1998 and became the first institution in Africa to do so. Since then, the number of available theses and dissertations has steadily increased as more students come to appreciate the importance of submitting digital files or their theses. Also, the university Senate has now made it mandatory for students to submit digital files of their theses and dessertations. In order to make electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) produced by tertiary institutions in Southern Africa readily available, universities in the Southern African region were invited to join in the ETD initiative. This would lead to the building of a digital library of theses and dissertations in the region. A few institutions have responded positively and, based on the adoption of our approach, have speedily gained approval of their governing bodies to embark on ETD projects. In addition, the South East Academic Libraries (SEALS), a library consortium of tertiary institutions in the Eastern Province of South Africa, is considering an ETD programme since this would promote collaboration between research programmes at separate universities/technikons by making research work visible and accessible via a network archive.

It is, however, surprising that some institutional leaders appear not to have realized that the digital revolution makes it imperative for institutions to use digital and publishing technologies innovatively in the provision of information as well as in the preservation and dissemination of the institutions' intellectual property.

The paper will review existing African theses and dissertation projects, including the Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) and the African Universities Dissertations Abstracts (AFUDA) projects, it will discuss the status of the Rhodes University project, responses from other institutions in the region and make suggestions for accelerated involvement of tertiary institutions in Africa, especially Southern Africa, in the international network of theses and dissertations.     

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Initiatives: A Survey of University Libraries in Nigeria

The study investigated the extent of adoption of electronic theses and dissertations in university libraries in Nigeria. Data collection for the study was via online questionnaire. The study revealed that digitization of theses and dissertations started between 1980 and 1995. It was found that only a few university libraries have embraced digitization of theses and dissertations in Nigeria. Benefits of electronic theses and dissertations were identified as improving university ranking and visibility, increasing access to the theses and dissertations, saving space in the library, enabling others link to the work with persistent URLs, preserving the work for future generations, and saving costs for students. Challenges such as unstable internet connectivity, lack of funding, irregular power supply, lack of information technology personnel, absence of electronic theses and dissertations submission policy, and copyright issues were identified. It is hoped that the study might provide insights useful for librarians planning to embark on the digitization of theses and dissertations project.     

Evaluation of a Program for Assigning Subject Headings to Local Theses and Dissertations

The assignment of subject headings to local theses and dissertations can be a time-consuming and costly activity in libraries where catalogers lack subject specialties. However, for many libraries subject analysis for theses and dissertations is a worthwhile task. At the Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas A&M University a program was instituted to remedy this situation by asking the student to suggest Library of Congress subject headings that accurately reflect the content of his or her work. This article reports the findings of an evaluation of this program and some considerations for its improvement. The authors believe that the use of such a program could speed the cataloging process as well as provide improved subject access to local theses and dissertations.     

The comparative importance of books: clinical psychology in the health sciences library

Clinical psychology has received little attention as a subject in health sciences library collections. This study seeks to demonstrate the relative importance of the monographic literature to clinical psychology through the examination of citations in graduate student theses and dissertations at the Fordham Health Sciences Library, Wright State University. Dissertations and theses were sampled randomly; citations were classified by format, counted, and subjected to statistical analysis. Books and book chapters together account for 35% of the citations in clinical psychology dissertations, 25% in nursing theses, and 8% in biomedical sciences theses and dissertations. Analysis of variance indicates that the citations in dissertations and theses in the three areas differ significantly (F = 162.2 with 2 and 253 degrees of freedom, P = 0.0001). Dissertations and theses in biomedical sciences and nursing theses both cite significantly more journals per book than the dissertations in clinical psychology. These results support the hypothesis that users of clinical psychology literature rely more heavily on books than many other users of a health sciences library. Problems with using citation analyses in a single subject to determine a serials to monographs ratio for a health sciences library are pointed out.     

中国人文社会科学学位论文影响力分析报告——基于"中国社会科学引文索引"(2000-2004)

运用CSSCI提供的数据,从学科、语种、时间、机构等各方面对学位论文的利用现状进行分析,旨在剖析学位论文的利用情况,呼吁社会科学研究领域提高学位论文的开放程度,增强学位论文的可获得性,使广大学者更好地利用这一重要的学术资源。     

高校自主管理研究生学位论文的版权管理模式初探

针对我国目前学位论文开发利用的实际情况,从研究生自己管理学位论文有困难、高校有职责和义务管理学位论文、高校比任何著作权管理组织更具有管理本校学位论文著作权的优势等角度来进行分析,提出建立高校自主管理学位论文的新型管理模式。     

德国电子学位论文元数据XMetaDiss及对我国的启示

针对电子学位论文的长期保存问题,论述了德国电子学位论文元数据XMetaDiss的产生、发展、结构及其应用前景,对XMetaDiss与我国CALIS高校学位论文元数据进行了比较,得出一些对我国电子学位论文信息组织的有益启示。     

学位论文描述性元数据的设计

介绍学位论文描述性元数据标准制订中遇到的几个问题;在对国内外已有学位论文描述性无数据进行比较分析的基础上,对学位论文著录对象和著录单位进行分析,并讨论基于DC的学位论文元数据制订方案、基于DC的扩展机制、元数据结构、元素组成互操作性等问题。     

WorldCat,the Other ETD Database: An Exploratory Study

Many librarians perceive ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses as the key resource for searching dissertations and theses. However, the Online Computer Library Center’s (OCLC’s) WorldCat also provides a means for locating electronic dissertations and theses. This study compared these two databases and found two key observations. First, both databases provided access to a similar number of citations. Second, WorldCat consistently had twice as many citations for which ProQuest had no records. WorldCat provides an important means of locating electronic theses and dissertations.     

论高校图书馆电子版学位论文的保存与管理工作——以北京大学图书馆为例

通过对国内外高校图书馆学位论文全文管理现状进行分析,结合当前国内外文档管理技术发展和学位论文系统研发情况,重点介绍北京大学图书馆的学位论文资源建设工作,并就当前国内学位论文工作中普遍存在的全文文件格式、版权等问题提出解决对策。     

Spreading the ETD Gospel: A Southern Africa Perspective

Rhodes University mounted its first digital thesis on the World Wide Web in 1998 and became the first institution in Africa to do so. Since then, the number of available theses and dissertations has steadily increased as more students come to appreciate the importance of submitting digital files or their theses. Also, the university Senate has now made it mandatory for students to submit digital files of their theses and dessertations. In order to make electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) produced by tertiary institutions in Southern Africa readily available, universities in the Southern African region were invited to join in the ETD initiative. This would lead to the building of a digital library of theses and dissertations in the region. A few institutions have responded positively and, based on the adoption of our approach, have speedily gained approval of their governing bodies to embark on ETD projects. In addition, the South East Academic Libraries (SEALS), a library consortium of tertiary institutions in the Eastern Province of South Africa, is considering an ETD programme since this would promote collaboration between research programmes at separate universities/technikons by making research work visible and accessible via a network archive.It is, however, surprising that some institutional leaders appear not to have realized that the digital revolution makes it imperative for institutions to use digital and publishing technologies innovatively in the provision of information as well as in the preservation and dissemination of the institutions' intellectual property.The paper will review existing African theses and dissertation projects, including the Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) and the African Universities Dissertations Abstracts (AFUDA) projects, it will discuss the status of the Rhodes University project, responses from other institutions in the region and make suggestions for accelerated involvement of tertiary institutions in Africa, especially Southern Africa, in the international network of theses and dissertations.     

Scatter and obsolescence of journals cited in theses and dissertations of librarianship

This article analyzes the bibliometric features (the number of pages, completion years, the fields of subject, the number of citations, and their distribution by types of sources and years) of 100 theses and dissertations completed at the Department of Librarianship of Hacettepe University between 1974 and 2002. Almost a quarter (24%) of all dissertations were on university libraries, followed by public libraries (9%). Doctoral dissertations were, on average, twice as long as master's theses and contained 2.5 times more citations. Monographs received more citations (50%) than journal articles did (42%). Recently completed theses and dissertations contained more citations to electronic publications. Fourteen (or 3.2% of all) journal titles (including Türk Kütüphaneciliği, College & Research Libraries, and Journal of the American Society for Information Science) received almost half (48.9%) of all citations. Eighty percent of journal titles were cited infrequently. No correlation was found between the frequency of citations of the most frequently cited journals and their impact factors. Cited journal titles in master's and doctoral theses and dissertations overlapped significantly. Similarly, journal titles cited in dissertations also overlapped significantly with those that were cited in the journal articles published in the professional literature. The distribution of citations to foreign journal titles fit Bradford's Law of Scattering. The mean half-life of all cited sources was 9 years. Sources cited in master's dissertations were relatively more current. Single authorship was the norm in cited resources. Coupled with in-library use data, findings of the present study can be used to identify the core journal titles in librarianship as well as to evaluate the existing library collections to decide which journal titles to keep, discard, or relegate to off-site storage areas.     

高校学位论文全文数据库建设实践————-以清华大学图书馆为例

从系统建设、数据处理、版权保护、存档与备份等角度，介绍清华大学图书馆学位论文全文数据库的建设实践，并在此基础上，对高校学位论文全文数据库建设提出一些建议。     

国际学位论文开发机构版权解决模式及其借鉴

从国际上主要学位论文开发机构的实践着手,分析其学位论文开发服务中版权问题的解决模式,并以此为基础,为我国相关机构开发利用学位论文提出如下建议:与大学签署合作协议;以获得作者授权为前提开发学位论文;建立合理的报酬支付模型;妥善处理第三方版权问题,加强用户管理;优化公益性学位论文开发的市场机制。     

A New Approach to Thesis Subject Analysis: A Collaborative Success

ABSTRACT

The challenge of assigning subject headings to academic theses and dissertations in a timely and cost-effective manner is discussed. The paper describes a collaborative effort between cataloger and subject bibliographer at the University of Nevada, Reno. The project has proven effective in getting theses processed in a shorter amount of time, with less total time spent cataloging and analyzing the items. The authors believe that utilizing the knowledge of the subject specialist has also provided improved subject access, particularly in highly specialized theses and dissertations. The authors describe the steps taken and the resources utilized.     

中国、泰国、尼泊尔贝叶经保护模式的对比研究

贝叶经分散保存于世界许多国家,对于这份珍贵的文献遗产,各国保存机构的保存方式和保护措施各不相同。中国、尼泊尔和泰国在过去的几十年时间里先后在贝叶经写本保护、缩微复制抢救、数字化利用等方面开展工作,形成了具有特色的保护方式。本文通过分析三个国家开展的在全球引起较大反响的贝叶经保护项目,对比其保护的任务、内容及成果等,归纳得出三种保护模式。文章在分析属地保护、属地保存+跨国合作保护、集中保存与保护三种模式特点的基础上,构建了面向利用的贝叶经保护体系。贝叶经保护的三种模式是不同时代、不同环境、不同文化背景的产物,数字化抢救、加强贝叶经信息资源的建设、构建利用共享平台是实现“藏”与“用”并重的重要举措。     

A Process for the Original Cataloging of Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this article is to describe the reasoning, methodology, and impact behind a semi-automated cataloging process for electronic theses and dissertations, and to explain the importance of the retention and addition of cataloger-created metadata. The authors explain an automated process that is initiated by ProQuest and student (author) entered data, and through the addition of metadata by catalogers, including the subject headings, classification number, and so on. The study includes a survey of the public service librarians’ perceived usefulness of the cataloger- and ProQuest-generated metadata to describe theses and dissertations.     

学位论文库元数据标准的研究

概述了我国元数据的研究现状，特别是在学位论文库中的应用现状。指明了元数据的相关概念及功能。研究了国内外学位论文库的元数据标准，提出了中文学位论文库元数据标准，并简要说明了元数据的描述与实现。